Gardenpartychallenge on Instagram

Was intrigued by the cards/art work in this challenge, so I decided to try my hand at it. The instructions were rectangle, blue, stars, woman’s portrait and embossing. I was originally going to use one of the Unity’s SMAK kit ladies, but then I had just received the Unity’s No Time for Guilt lady and decided to try her. I also used a sentiment from She Never Says Never Kit. For the stars, I used the Hello it’s Me kit, for the dots on the shirt, a Good Life Kit, and for the squiggly line, the Beautiful Elements Mixed Media Kit. I used a background stamp called Dinged Dots for the large dots. I did pull in another vendor with the star stamps from a Dina Wakely kit.

I have been wanting to try to create an acrylic gelli plate background, so I pulled out some acrylics and a Primary Elements powder. I used a Carabelle Studio texture plate and a Stencil Girl Stencil to create 3 backgrounds. I liked them, but next time I’ll use better contrast between colors. The process was rollout colors, add design and press paper down on top. I did this about 3 times on each paper, changing up the designs.

For the card I began by stamping the large star design a couple times. I then added color to the stars using Derwent Intense pencils, Glitter ink and water. I then added the large dots in several areas using a blue Brutus Monroe embossing powder. I then stamped and embossed the sentiment in black and added squiggle lines.

Turning to the image, I stamped it in Memento London Fog. I then added color using oxides in Tattered Rose and Picked Raspberries for the face, and Derwent Inktense pencils and silver glitter ink for the shirt. I added some of the Primary Elements blue to the hair as well as the pencils. I embossed Dinged Dots again around the girl and added a little of the cream acrylic on one side of the girl. I used a black pen on the girl to make her stand out more.

Finally, I added some black and white pastes to the bottom later using a couple different stencils (one being a Tim Holtz Star Stencil). I used the pencils again around the white stars to make them stand out. For the Dina Wakely stars, I used a Kraft paper scrap. I just stamped the large bottom one, but the 3 surrounding the girl are embossed. I inked the edges, added black string and a navy background and called the card done!

This was a fun exercise, as I got to experiment a little, hone my skills some more, all while playing around with different media. For all that, I think it turned out okay. Let me know what you think...

Till next time, happy crafting!