For Mom

Mother's Day is coming!  Every year I say I'm going to get my cards made in advance.  Each year I'm stressing out on the Saturday before trying to get a card finished.  LOL.  Not this year!  I stumbled across some lovely Mother's Day themed stamps on Etsy.  The one I'm using today is called Mother's Day Portrait by AandMMemoriesdesigns and can be found HERE.  Angela was very kind and let me be on her Design Team!

I sized the stamp down to what I wanted and printed it out on watercolor paper.  I wanted to try my hand at watercoloring the image.  I have a set of the Daniel Smith watercolor sample dot sheets.  I love having these so I can try out all of the colors without having to buy full tubes.  That way I can figure out which colors should make it into my collection.  I did forget to write down which ones I ended up using on the stamp.  Oops.  I do know I used French Ochre for the skin.  That one I will be adding to my collection.

Once she was dry I went back and added a few shadows.  Then I painted a very watered down blue on the inside of the curly frame.  More drying time and then I added a very watered down gray to the outside of the frame.  I set it aside to finish drying.

I wanted a watercolor background and picked out a few distress oxide ink colors that coordinated with the colors I used on the stamp.  I squished worn lipstick, bundled sage and shaded lilac onto my craft mat.  I spayed them with water and then pressed another piece of watercolor paper down onto them.  I quickly dried them with the heat gun and pressed it down in different sections into the inks.  I left it to air dry.

At this point the main image was dry and I used a Stitched Round Rectangle die from My Favorite Things to cut it out.  For the watercolored background I ran it through my Big Shot with the Circles & Diamonds stitched pattern die from Lil' inker Designs.  You can't see it very well in the picture but it adds a great touch in person.  Then I cut the whole piece with a Stitched Rectangle die from My Favorite Things.  They have some of my very favorite dies!  I'm especially fond of stitched dies.

I adhered all the layers onto a pale lilac piece of cardstock and then all of that onto a white card base.  At this point I was trying to figure out if or where I could add a sentiment.  After much searching through my collection, I settled on a Mom die from SugarPea Designs.  I cut it out of watercolor paper and inked it with shaded lilac distress oxide ink.  I went over it a few times to give it an ombre look and glued it on to the card.

For the final touch I added just a little bit of Crystal Stickles.  Ta da!  All done AND plenty of time before Mother's Day.  I won't be sweating bullets the Saturday before.  Go me!

I encourage you to check out the full line of digital stamps (and planner accessories) available at the A & M Memories shop --->  A & M Memories

Thanks for stopping by today!

~Kristina