Perfect Match Inspiration | Getting All Mushy with Norine

Hello again Spellbinders friends and fans!  Norine from The Velvet Lemon (www.thevelvetlemon.blogsopot.com) back with you for a second post this week! I hope you caught my previous post featuring Pretzel cards made with the Twisted stamp and die set from the Perfect Match Collection by Debi Adams.  If not you can find it here.  We have a trio of cards today, that I made using another stamp and die set from that same collection by Debi Adams, called Getting All Mushy. Once again, I’m dying from the puns! They are so great! With cute and clever puns like these it means nobody has to take these cards too seriously – we can just have fun, have a giggle and save the serious Thinking of You cards for another day!

I will tell you though, I’m closely acquainted with mushrooms in the “wild”. We spend the summers at our lake cottage in Canada, where it can often be rainy and damp – perfect climate for growing mushrooms.  And before you get any notions of a “Lake Cottage” being something quaint or special, let me tell you about the one summer that was so wet, and the roof so hole-y, that we had mushrooms growing INSIDE the sun porch! I wish I were joking! It wasn’t too many years later that we tore the place down and erected a structure that keeps the mushrooms outside where they belong. However one thing I did learn, is that red polka-dotted mushrooms are real! Not just something you see in children’s story books! That fact alone makes them more fun to color!

For today’s cards, I stamped with Versafine Onxy Black ink onto watercolor paper and colored the images with Faber Castell watercolor pencils and a water brush. I wasn’t sure what my final card designs would look like, but I had a car trip to take and an hour or two to fill, so I stamped them ahead of time, and took along with me, some watercolor pencils and a water brush, to color them up away from home!

For the first card, I stamped the variety of three different mushrooms, colored/painted them, and then die cut them with the coordinating dies. I stamped the “love you so mush” sentiment onto more watercolor paper and hand cut it into a fishtail banner.  I wanted to overlap the mushrooms without covering so much of them that you wouldn’t be sure what was hiding beneath, so I cut the stems and “grew” the mushrooms taller by tucking the top and bottom pieces under the edge of the sentiment banner. For the background, I took the same sentiment and stamped rows of words at random positions from left to right, using Versamark ink and white embossing powder to heat emboss. Then I painted a wash of color with water color paints over most of the background to allow the heat embossed sentiments to subtly be visible.

For the 2nd card, I colored the stamped images with an unlikely combination of rainbow shades! I figured why not, right?  We’re having fun with these stamp sets! Once the mushrooms were colored up and die-cut, I adhered them in a row along the bottom of the card front, and then drew a stitched line below to visually anchor the images. I added some floating hearts above, and stamped the sentiment below the stitched line.  It doesn’t get any more simple and easy than that!

For the last card, I stamped each of the three mushrooms onto Eclipse masking paper and cut them out to make masks for stamping. I used the biggest one to mask off that mushroom and then tuck the image of the tall conical mushroom in behind the big one in front. I created a mini scene with the three mushrooms by drawing a foreground of grass with a Copic Liner pen.  It also helps to separate the sentiment from the images.  I colored and water-painted the three mushrooms (in a more traditional color scheme this time) as well as the heart portion of the sentiment. Then I covered each of the mushrooms with the masking paper, and created a rectangle frame with masking tape and blended Ranger Distress Oxide ink over the whole card panel to create the blue background. Then I splattered water drops onto the paper and daubed them dry with paper towel to create the lighter colored splotches. To assemble the card, I trimmed a coordinating piece of patterned paper to 1/8th” smaller on each side than an A2 sized card and adhered it to a card base. I trimmed the colored and ink blended panel with a similarly sized border and adhered that to the card front. I cut 2 narrow strips of grey card stock and adhered them to the corners to give the appearance of a kind of photo holder.

Spellbinders Supplies:

• SDS-129 Getting All Mushy 

Other supplies:

Unknown brand patterned paper, Versafine Onyx Black ink pad, Versamark ink pad, Copic Multiliner pens, Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils, Ranger water brush, Neenah Desert Storm card stock, Prima watercolor paint, Tombow Xtreme permanent adhesive.

I just love how simple and easy it is to create a charming set of cards, using these hand-drawn images and cute puns!  I’ll see you again in a couple of days with another project using stamps and dies from this collection!  Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

SaveSave

SaveSave