Watercolor Valentine's Day Card featuring Avery Elle Stamps

Ever since the idea of Valentine's Day came up in Christmas, ya know... when the stores transition from one holiday to another before the first holiday has arrived, lol! Well, that's when I began collecting new stamps to use for Valentine's Day. I knew I'd only be making a card for my hubby, but I hadn't decided what I'd use yet... so I had to have them all :) Anyone else have this problem? In the end, out of like... 15 new stamps or so, I used 2, haha. All the stamps I invested in though can be used for years and different occasions, so I have reason to have them after all ;)

So to start my card for my hubby, I literally pulled all my new stamp sets and papers that were love-themed and stacked them on my craft table. I was a bit overwhelmed and had NO idea where I wanted to start or what I wanted to use. Did I want to make a scene? Did I want to use a card sketch? Was I going to go for sweet and cute or more romantic? As I searched through the stack, I came across Avery Elle's Favorite Person and Love Puffin. I had bought them at the same time and really had wanted to use them, so that's where my plan started.

I still didn't know if I wanted to build a scene or use a card sketch, so I started searching the internet of images of cards using this puffin set. I came across Avery Elle's page where they had a scene example and example card using that scene, and I just adored the card that was made and had to remake it. It was simple, it used mixed media (watercoloring), and I could modify it to use the Favorite Person stamp set in combination. Done! So I can't at all take credit for coming up with the idea, but it was still fun to make and try the watercoloring technique shared.

I began my card by pulling a Neenah Solar White top-folding card base. I have these all cut and ready to create cards with so that all I have to do it score and fold the card. VERY helpful, and I love the 110lb. thickness of the CS for my card bases! Next I pulled out some additional Neenah cardstock that was already cut to 4.25"x5.5" - another trick that helps my crafting process go quicker. I stamped the puffins with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink since I would be using Copics and colored them in using the Copics listed below. When I first used the N0 for shading on the puffins, I was debating whether or not to leave it like that. I decided to add N2 for shading and N0 for the color of the puffins, because I'm sure they're never PURE white in person. I die cut my puffins and put them aside.

Next I pulled out some Ranger Watercolor paper also already cut down to 4.25"x5.5". I pulled out my simple watercolor set and a pretty large size flat paintbrush. It took me two times to create the background that I wanted to use for my card. The trick to getting a lot of pigment AND letting the colors blend is to do some layers of "almost" dry brushing and letting the layers dry in-between coatings. I began with pink at the top, then a peachish color, yellow, and blue. I didn't want too much green so I didn't add that between yellow and blue and knew they'd mix to make a small amount of green. I just continued to add layers as the paint dried to build up more pigmentation, and slightly overlapped the colors to get a nice blend. I actually had a lot of fun creating this background, so I will definitely have to do this technique again :)

Next, I pulled some basic white paper and, because I did't have a die to create a large rocky hill/iceburg, I just tore the paper to create this look and adhered it to the lower left-hand corner of my background. Lastly, I ran this whole piece through my Big Shot using the largest die from Lawn Fawn's Small Stitched Rectangle dies.

To start really putting my card together, I used my Mini Misti (did not want to mess up the background I had just spent time making) to stamp the sentiment "You are my everything" from the Favorite Person stamp set with Ranger Archival Jet Black Ink. Next, I positioned my puffins onto the iceberg and popped them up with some thin foam squares. I adhered this piece to a black matte cut to 4.25"x5.5" using a piece of foam in between to add dimension, then adhered the whole thing to my card base. I finished off the card with some Pretty Pink Posh Clear Sparkling Sequins and some Clear Wink of Stella to the word everything and added lines of glitter into the ocean part of my scene - ya know how you see the ocean almost sparkling when the sun is up... that's what I was going for :)