You Make Me Smile

Hello!!! I hope you are having a fabulous weekend!!  Let me begin by saying that one of my New Year's Resolutions is to pay more attention to my blog.  This poor thing is a tad bit neglected.  I seem to post only when I have to.  So from now on, I plan to make at least one extra post a week. A post that is not related to any design team projects or hops.  I know a lot of bloggers post daily, but I'm not quite there :).  These post will almost always happen on the weekends as I do not have the energy to create after a day at work!  I hope you enjoy these extras :)

For this weekends extra, I've used products from Right At Home and Studio Katia.  I am a part of the design team for Studio Katia, it's a wonderful little online shop based here in Canada and is owned and operated by one super lady!!  Please check out her shop, she has some amazing stamps, dies and sequins (oh my, the sequins!!!).  As for Right at Home, well, I am a super fan of Nicole's stamps and dies. They are like nothing else out there.  Super unique and funky!  So I thought these two small businesses owned by two amazing women deserved to be paired together.

I used my new favourite background stamp, the Cloud Background Stamp from RAH.  I used my Tombow markers in three shades of grey and coloured them directly on the stamp.  Then gave it a light spritz of water.  I placed my watercolour paper directly on top and lightly pressed around.

It gave a super cool effect.  But I found that the lightest grey I used, showed up too light.  So I just added a bit more color to these clouds.  I also added touches of color to the other clouds as well because it enhanced the watercolour look.  I scribbled the grey markers onto an acrylic block, mixed with quite a bit of water and flicked some droplets over the background.  I, then,  used a stitched rectangle die from My Favorite Things to die cut the panel.

For the sentiment, I first die cut a piece of watercolour paper with the smallest of the Stitched Nested Creative Squares.  This die was the perfect fit for a sentiment from the Color In Sentiments set from RAH.

I used two shades of yellow and decided it needed a little darker color at the bottom, which I added with this Tombow marker.  These markers blend out beautifully.  I placed the sentiment panel onto my cloud background and decided it needed a bit more yellow.  I thought ribbon would be perfect but unfortunately the only yellow ribbon I have was WAY TOO yellow!!  So the next best thing?  Cut a thin piece of scrap watercolour paper and use the same three yellow markers to color it!!

I placed the yellow strip onto my cloud panel with TomBow Mono Multi glue and adhered the sentiment with foam tape.  I used the Mono Multi to adhere the cloud panel onto my grey cardbase.  I added some Clear Wink of Stella to all the clouds and the "smile". Next came a layer of Glossy Accents to the "smile"!

It's so hard to capture the sparkle, but trust me its there!!

And there it is!! My weekend "extra"!  I really hope you enjoyed and I really hope you are able to check out these shops!!

Thank you SO much for stopping by!!  And see you soon!

Laurie