The Wacky Watercooler Second January Mini Blog Hop

Before I begin introducing my projects for this Blog Hop, I want to talk about a friend who should be participating in this blog hop with us today but, instead, is in the hospital fighting for her life.  You will all remember Christine Giuda.  She has participated in our Blog Hops more often than not over the years and her projects are always incredible.  Please pray for this sweet, talented and warm-hearted lady and her family.  Thank you.

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This is our second mini blog hop this month, introducing the 2017 Occasions Catalogue as well as 2017's Sale-a-bration.  Some wonderful products have been introduced and, of course, thanks to Sale-a-bration, until March 31st, for every $60 CDN you spend, you get a product FREE from the Sale-a-bration brochure.  Sweet, right?

As you will remember, if you've wandered through our blog hops before, our blog hop is presented in a circular fashion.  What does that mean?  Wherever you begin in our blog hop, whether you go forwards or backwards through the participants, eventually you will wind up precisely where you began.  I hope you'll take time to visit all the participating blogs and, perhaps, leave a short message letting us know  what you've thought of our posts.

If you've been moving forwards through the blog hop, you'll have arrived here from the very talented Jean Fitch's post.  Jean makes her home in Oregon and is a member of our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge artists as well.

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For my first project I turned to one of the most outstanding of the new stamp sets, Beautiful You.  Not only are the images beautifully sketched and versatile, but the sentiments included in the set are also some of the best I've seen in quite a while.  I imagine I will be using this set quite happily for years to come.

My card is oversized simply because of what I wanted to include.  I absolutely love the remarkable papers that are part of the Serene Scenery Designer Series paper stack.  I've used some of them before but one, especially, stood out as being perfect for this card.  The beauty of this seaside scene is that it allowed me to use another stamp set which I love along with the Beautiful You set, and that is Wetlands.  Don't those sandpipers look as if they were naturally part of the scene?  

I decided to stamp the image from Beautiful You on a piece of Watercolour Paper and then cut it out using a stitched oval framelit.  I followed along with the natural curves of the colours in the designer paper using an Aqua Brush and several colours of ink.  Since all the sandpipers have shadows, I added a shadow for my lovely lady by first stamping the image on a piece of Window sheet and then quickly placing it on the paper behind my lady, thus providing the shadow.

Instead of leaving the umbrella and dress plain, I used the tiny flower stamp from the Weather Together set to add some blooms.  Then I used my Aqua Painter and the Bermuda Bay and Crushed Curry inks to colour them in.  For my sentiment I used the Thoughtful Banners and matching punch as well as a sentiment from the Beautiful You set.

A few tiny pearls and my card was done.

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For my second project I had fun with a mixture of products from the Annual Catalogue, 2017 Occasions Catalogue, and, of course, the Sale-a-bration brochure.  It didn't begin well.  I had decided to use the gorgeous Inside the Lines designer series paper that is offered free during Sale-a-bration.  The main reason for that was that it contains some stunning images which can be coloured with any variety of tools, but, especially with the new Stampin' Up! Watercolor Pencils.  A secondary reason was that the image I chose also included some beautiful dragonfly images and, so far, I haven't bought the new Dragonfly Dreams bundle---next order!

Well, I coloured my images, cut them out using the stitched circle framelits, and totally hated them.  You have to understand that I'm convalescing at the moment and I hit some highs and lows during the day.  Thank goodness I didn't throw away the images (my first impulse), because the next day I knew that I could use them.  And so I hauled out a whole bunch of other products and got to work.  In the end I used some of the Irresistibly Floral Specialty Designer series paper from the Annual Catalogue, the beautiful new Falling Petals embossing folder and Stylish Stems thinlits from the 2017 Occasions Catalogue, and a whole bunch of current cardstocks and inks.

I made it all about circles and added some die-cut leaves and suddenly the images which I had hand-coloured seemed perfect instead of being rejects.  (Remember, I have been having those highs and lows.)  And the whole card just came together almost effortlessly.  

Do you see the slight glitter to the wings of the bee and the dragonfly?  That's due to the subtle effect of the clear Wink of Stella brush.  Trust me, in person those wings simply "rock!"

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And that's it for my projects.  I hope you've enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed creating them.  From here you'll be visiting another wonderfully creative stamper, Sheri Lee.  Sheri is another Canadian and is a frequent participant of our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.