Paper Smooches SPARKS

Happy Monday people!!

It has been a happy, productive weekend in my craftroom.  Yesterday I decided to break out two stamp sets from Paper Smooches and participate in the SPARKS  challenge this week!

This week's challenge was anything goes - yay!!!

In my last post (HERE) I talked about my new-found love for Spectrum Noir Alcohol Markers so I decided to do one card coloring using ONLY Spectrum Noir Markers and the other using ONLY my Copic Markers.  Let's see the results!

First up is the card using ONLY Spectrum Noir markers.  I took my Paper Smooches' "FOLKal Points" set and stamped out my house, chicken, chick, lamb, and sun on my Neenah Bright White 120lb cardstock and cut them out with my Silhouette Cameo, using my new PixScan mat (more on this later!).

I LOVE the way this card turned out!  I think the ink blending using the Spectrum Noir markers is awesome!  I created a background for my card using mini Distress ink and a blending tool and then I used Kristina Werner's technique of dropping water on the inked piece and blotting it with a towel to create texture.

(Here's a tip! Interested in creating a scene like the one above, but you don't have any of those fancy scene-creating dies?  I didn't either!  I used the largest die in some of my older Spellbinders' label dies and just layered them over each other to create hills for my scene!)

The second card for the SPARKS challenge is this sweet baby card that I made using the "Pip Squeeks" set and ONLY my Copic Markers.  Obviously, these markers also blend perfectly and I love them, but, because of the expense, I don't have as many of these markers and I often have a bit less variety in my color choices.  I DID use a good blending technique if you want REALLY soft blending, but don't have many of the pastel colors.  I lay down a layer of the colorless blender all over the whole image and then take my slightly darker color and use a flicking motion to blend the darker color out to white. You can go back in that flick the colorless blender back the opposite way to remove any unwanted color from the highlighted side. (Hopefully that wasn't TOO confusing!)

This set is GREAT for creating a background and it came together REALLY quickly.  I went ahead and stamped the focal images on the background - just so I would have plenty of room to add those images when I color and cut them out later.

Join in the SPARKS anything goes challenge with me this week!  If you do, good luck!

Later queenies!