A Busy Friday Night

My Friday night was a busy one....

and...

it was the kind of busy that I like!

A friend asked me to make 15 water colored cards for him...

5 each...of 3 different designs.
He asked that the hydrangeas be a coral/red/pink color...
the other images could be water colored in colors of my choice.

So I did all of the stamping and heat embossing the other night

and did the water coloring tonight.

I anticipated putting the cards together on the third night...

but I had the air conditioning in the studio turned up to icicle temps..

and so...the water colored pieces dried ASAP

which meant that I was able to complete all 15 cards ASAP!!

I didn't plan on doing a blog post about these cards...

but as I was working on them the colors all looked so pretty....

and so...

I changed my mind about the blog post...

took a few quick unplanned photos with my phone...

and decided to share them here at my blog.

 Here they are...right after I matted all of the water colored and dried images...

The colors are so pretty...

That's what really made me decide to share them here at my blog...

(I know...I know....I am repeating myself about the colors)

Each image was heat embossed with gold embossing powder

and then water colored with 

an assortment of ink pads..

Kuretake Gansai dry paints...

and..

ZIG markers

After the images dried..

I took a sec to get out some metallic card stock...and choose the mat colors for each image.

I matched each painted image to a metallic card stock color that complemented the image.

I then matted all of the images (*as seen above)

If you visit my blog now and then...

you've seen me create cards with this image many times before...

I'm asked to create "Hydrangea cards" often...

which is fine with me...because I like this image...

and I love to water color.

This is a Stampin Up stamp set called "Best Thoughts"...

and I have put a lot of mileage on my hydrangea stamp.

I know that it's a nice stamp set...

but truthfully...I never imagined that I'd get so many requests to create cards with this image.

The next 5 cards were created with a large 6x6 stamp called Peony Garden....

from The Ton Stamps

I used Ultra High Gold Embossing powder for this card.

I love how the Ultra High EP adds some great texture to the image.

Ultra High EP isn't for everything...every image...

but....this image is ideal for Ultra High Heat Embossing, I think.

Again...if you visit my blog often...

you've seen me create this card before..in different colors...

and always with the Ultra High embossing power.

And finally...

5 of this wonderful Catherine Scanlon Stamp...

I am a HUGE fan of her stamp designs...

& always welcome the opportunity to sit down to create some cards with a Catherine Scanlon stamp.

I've made cards with this stamp in the past...quite a few times...

I've heat embossed this image with black embossing powder...

and Ive heat embossed the image with Gold embossing powder...

I prefer the gold for this particular image.

This is always a fun image to paint...

there's lots of opportunity to add color.

I surprised myself by completing all 15 cards ...

because the original plan was..

stamp and emboss one night...

water color the second night...

mat and put together the cards ...the third night.

Finishing the cards sooner than I thought that I might is a good thing...

because I've got my eye on another Catherine Scanlon stamp that I haven't used yet...

one that is fantastic for water coloring.

Now...
With the 15 cards finished....

I can ink-up that new Catherine Scanlon stamp a day sooner!!

Thanks for visiting...

have a wonderful Saturday, my crafty friends!

Michelle