New Release and a New Challenge at ADFD

Its time again for a new release and a new challenge over at ADFD.  This week's new images are spectacular.  Here's a sneak peek of them, and you can purchase any one of them (or all) at the ADFD store.

Don't forget the $2.00 release image.  This week is it the ballerina slippers and is a super deal for $2.00

We are also starting a new challenge at ADFD - Challenge #9 - "A Fresh Coat of Paint".  So get creative, get messy. Its a lot of fun.  And congratulations to the winner of our last Challenge:  Sabina.  You can see her entry here.

This week I got to play with some acrylic scrapbooking paints that I've had in my stash for a very long time.  In fact, I've had them so long (and not used them) they were drying out and came out about the consistency of toothpaste.  I was annoyed with myself for not using them since they're such pretty colours and letting them get to this state, I tried to look on the bright side.  Now instead of just coating my paper with colour, they were also going to give it some texture. :)  First I'll show you my card, then I tell you how I made it.

Supplies:

Stamps:  Delicate Dancer (A Day for Daisies), You've Got Flair sentiment (You've Got Flair set, Close to My Heart)

Papers:  cardstock (Recollections & Bazzil), watercolour paper (Canson 100#)

Tools & Embellishments:  scrapbooking paints (Making Memories - Anthology collection), plastic stencil (Pebbles - Fancy Frills set), fancy tags shapeabilities dies (Spellbinders), ribbon (Michaels), classic ink (SU - Night of Navy), Stickles, paper flower (unknown), brad (Michaels), Iridescent medium (Windsor & Newton), sponges, rhinestone (Recollections), watercolour paints (Loew Cornell), Twinkling H20s

So, to make the background paper, I took a piece of grey cardstock and painted some of the green shade of paint in streaks on it leaving some of the grey showing through.  Then I took a stencil and put that in the corner and used some of the blue paint and stencilled the shape.  Since the paint is really thick, the stencil really stands up off the page and the streaks make the paper look aged.  Once the paint was dry, I took a few drops of Night of Navy ink and mixed that with some iridescent medium and sponged it on the part of the card front opposite the stencil.  I let that dry and then sponged over the entire card front with the iridescent medium again. To use up the left over ink mixture, I sponged it on the petals of the paper flower.  While all that was drying, I cut my tag with my Spellbinder die and stamped the sentiment with Night of Navy classic ink.  I had to stamp each word separately and mask the other words since the sentiment wouldn't fit the way it is and I only had room to put it on the left side of the tag.

For the focal image, I printed it on watercolour paper and used regular watercolour paints on her body and the bodice of her dress.  For the skirt, I used my long neglected Twinkling H20s.  Once the image was dry, I put dark blue stickles on all the flowers.  I decided since my background was kind of aged looking that I would take my distressing tool to the edges of it and the edges of the main image.  

I matted the ballerina on dark blue Bazzil cardstock, ran some navy blue satin ribbon through the tag and attached  it all to the card front.  The main image is adhered with pop-dots.

I had a lot of fun making this card.  I got really messy and used some products I hadn't used yet.  My only problem with the process is that I just got a set of gel nails the day before I made this card.  Now my nice pretty french manicure is stained Night of Navy blue.  Most of it came off in the shower and the shampoo really takes ink off your fingers well, so its all good.  I had fun and that's the most important part.

I really hope you all join in and get messy with your paints for this new challenge.

Talk to you later...

Cat