Guest Designer on the HLS Watercolour Challenge

Happy Tuesday evening to you …….

I'm back in the world of technology .... whoo hoo!!! 

Just in case you’re wondering where I’ve been …… no I haven’t been on some exotic holiday, not even a little trip across to the UK.  The reason I’ve been AWOL is …….. we’ve been moving house!

We’re still not fully sorted in the new place yet, but we’re getting there.

I'm so glad our internet is finally up and running ...... and just in the nick of time too.

It's the start of the Happy Little Stampers Watercolour Challenge for the month of March and guess what ........ I’m Guest Designer! 

Thank you so much ladies for inviting me along ..... so happy to be joining in the fun.

The theme is Anything Goes with an optional twist …… and for March that twist is ....... SMOOSH!

I do love a good smoosh …… and for my GD piece I’ve used the acetate smooshing technique .....

I applied some regular Distress Inks directly onto a craft sheet and then spritzed them with a little water.  I say ‘regular Distress’ because guess what’s waiting in my new craft room?  Yep!  The brand new Distress Oxide’s!!!  All 12 colours, plus the re-inkers ….. excited or what!  I need to get the craft room sorted before I can play though!

I used a piece of acetate to pick up some of the colour and then smooshed the ink onto a piece of white card.  This is such a fun technique, and a great way to create colourful backgrounds.  No two will ever be exactly the same.

I repeated the technique a couple of times until I liked the look of the background …….. note, each time I used a different colour of ink I dried off the previous one first,so as not to mix the colours too much.  I didn’t want to end up with a muddy mess!

Once it was all dry I used the HLS Doodled Flowers and stamped the flowers using a Black Versafine ink.

At this point if you wanted more colour on the flowers you could always go in with your Distress Ink and a paintbrush, or even use pens or pencils over the top.   I chose to leave things as they were and let the smooshed background show through.

I drew in the stems by hand with a black fine liner pen and added a few leaves from the Doodled Flowers stamp set …….. they’ve been coloured  using Distress Inks

The sentiment is made up of ……  ‘Happy’ from the Bold Birthday Sentiments stamp set, stamped in a pink Memento ink.  I did use my MISTI for this to get a nice even coverage, and then I added the ‘Birthday’ part from the Butterfly Birthday set, stamped in the black

I couldn’t leave the inside blank now could I ……. 

Acetate smooshed again using the same colours of Distress and finished with another sentiment from HLS Butterfly Birthday set 

Hope you like it. 

Check out the HLS Blog for more fabulous smooshing inspiration from the rest of the Design Team.   You’ll also find links on there to some great videos and demos of more smooshing techniques.

Don’t forget, as with all the HLS Challenges there’s a prize up for grabs.  The challenge winner will receive a $15 discount voucher to spend in the HLS store ……. So get smooshing!!

As the old craft room isn’t fully up and running yet at the new house I won’t be joining in with all my regular DT commitments/challenges throughout March (sigh!)  

I'll still be keeping an eye on things though, visiting all the various challenge entries and leaving comments for you lovely people who take the time to join in,  so I won’t miss anything.  

It just gives me time to settle into my new craft room properly and then normal service will resume at the beginning of April ....... I promise.  You'll hear from me again before then though.

As I said we've been busy moving house ..... always fun!  We haven’t moved far, and we’re settling in nicely. We're finally in a place for just hubby and I ..... both kids have flown the nest (again!) and we're back to just the two of us.  It’s quiet, but it's already beginning to look, and feel like home. 

There's still a few things to sort out though .   The telephone and internet finally got connected today (thank goodness!) so that's one thing off the list.  Sky TV hasn’t done their bit yet (good thing we have plenty of Blu-rays to watch) and my mobile phone is out of action ..... talk about feeling cut off!!!  It had a little accident during the move …….. it came into contact with water (ooops!)  So now it’s with the local gadget guy and is hopefully being fixed ….. if not,  guess what my birthday present will be at the weekend ..... yep .... a new phone! 

The new craft room is coming along though .... slowly!  I’m up on the top floor this time, with a sea view.  How much I'll get done up there remains to be seen.  All I've done so far in between the unpacking is drink my coffee and stare out to sea! 

Once it’s all sorted I will share some pictures with you. 

Thanks for popping by .... enjoy the rest of your day.

 

Cheerio until next time ......