OWH - Sketch #234

Here is my card for this week's sketch from Operation Write Home. The shell was stamped on watercolor paper using StazOn and I used Stampin' Write Markers and a watercolor brush to apply the colors. I've also included another card below that I will be using for a card swap later this week. Hope you're having a great Sunday and thanks for visiting my blog.

Card Swap - March

This month's card swap, as well as the remaining card swaps for the year, will not have a specific technique or theme. Just an FYI if you'd been following along with last year's monthly techniques and swaps.

For this card I actually had over a dozen of these cool sun guys stamped and colored and I thought the image would look great over some heavily embossed and coordinating paper. I finished the card by using my air spritzer (again) to add a touch of gold ink before I adhered the sentiment which I thought went well with the clocks in the background. Hope you like it.

Card Swap - Ghosting Technique

Here is this month's swap for the Ghosting Technique. Instead of embossing the background with  clear embossing powder, I took a shortcut and used craft cardstock that was already embossed. After sponging on Stampin' Up! Rhabarberrot ink, I wiped the surface with a clean paper towel to remove the ink from the embossed areas. I then applied two different widths of tape down the length of the card and attached a stamped and punched heart with Stampin' dimensionals.

Card Swap - Masking Tape Technique

Happy Wednesday! Here is this month's card swap for the Masking Tape Technique. Rather than try to create a faux background or some type of distressed look, I kept it simple and applied the inked masking tape in stripes. I finished the card with a classic stamp from Stampin' Up!, "Lovely As A Tree."

Card Swap - Collage Stamping Technique

Here is my card swap for this month's technique. I used Stampin' Up's core'dinations cardstock with the new alphabet press embossing folder to create the background. The lobster, sea horse and script images are from the "By the Tide" set. You can view the instructions for the technique at this post.

Twisted Card

My swap group is finally back up and running this year and we were tasked with doing a twisted card. I'm not sure that I really like the look and I felt like I was wasting a lot of card stock but if you're interested in making one you can follow along with Kelly Gettelfinger.

Emerging Color Card Swap

The toughest part of this technique is finding just the right stamp.  Ideally you want to use a stamp with a decent amount of surface area but you also want some negative space for the ink to penetrate between the embossed areas.  I choose to use the new Papillon Potpourri butterfly stamp set from Stampin' Up!  Below I included some step-by-step photos to go along with the previous directions.

I started by stamping solid circles onto whisper white cardstock using daffodil delight and calypso coral ink.  Now that I'm looking at it on the screen, I'm thinking that perhaps a patterned paper might also work well for this.

Once I had my background stamped I ran a heat tool over the surface just to make sure the clear embossing powder wouldn't stick to the circles.  I then stamped the butterfly images in versamark and applied clear embossing powder.

Next I used a sponge instead of a brayer to go over the embossed images with island indigo ink.  I chose to use the sponge because I wanted to control the intensity of the ink so it wouldn't totally wash out the color of the circles.

Here is a closer view of the finished product.  The texture on background paper is from the new chevron embossing folder.