With Love Sprinkled On Top

For those of you who have kids, have you ever wondered how they can make such a big mess in so little time?  The only thing I can think of is ... they're related to me...  

This is what my table looked like when I finished the card I have for you today, I even tried to put some stuff away as I went along and had to bring it back out because I wasn't done with it!

I don't have a separate craft room or studio but I was lucky enough when we remodeled our kitchen to add a desk and bank of cabinets to the wall you can see in the photo for craft supplies.   The table was custom built to be 8' x 4' with lots of craft storage under it and I must admit I'm infringing ever so slightly in the kitchen cabinet area.  Ever so slightly!  

I had every intention of working on my air brushing skills today and needed a project.  I checked some of the challenges to get inspired and had a mixture of Tiddly Inks NO designer paper, Tuesday Taggers Birthday Tag in Brown & Cream colors and Tuesday Morning Sketches Your Favorite Color Combo and glitter on my mind.  

Hey, I think my favorite color combo is Brown and Cream today!  I started trying to air brush a Spellbinder's embossing stencil on cream colored card stock.  I've bent the thing so badly it didn't work out, plan B.  I decided I'd try sponging the ink from a stamp pad and it worked pretty well.  

I should probably add I made the card body first.  My friend Julie was over the other day and she brought the cutest card she'd made, it was a tri-fold she'd come up with.  She told me she'd used every technique I"d shown her so far, she had and it was so cute!   I took her tri-fold idea and made a tag shaped card body because that was one of the elements in the Tuesday Taggers challenge.

The image I used is from Tiddly Inks which I re-sized and printed so it would fit in a rectangle Spellbinder's die.  This digi stamp comes on one sheet with other images around it as part of a set.  I'm not very good with Photo Shop Elements yet and enjoy using Microsoft Publisher for digi stamps.  I had some parts of the other images on the right edge of my cut out rectangle.  I remembered what Marianne Walker said in the Copic Certification class I took in April, "the only difference between a professional artist and an amateur is a professional knows how to hide their mistakes."  

I'm not a professional but, to hide my lack of skill using Photo Shop (mistakes) I decided to use my Papertrey Ink ric rak die on the edge of my focal image panel.  

The cupcake fairy is colored with Copic markers and I air brushed around her to take the white off the card stock I used.  I also added Stampin' Up! Dazzling Diamonds glitter to her wings and cupcake.

Can you see the glitter?  It's was everywhere!  

Next I added a punched circle in Papertrey Ink Dark Chocolate and used my eyelet setting tools to make a hole in the middle of it.  It needed balance so I added three Dew Drops after coloring the bottoms using E59 (Walnut) and attached them with SU Crystal Effects.  

As you can see from the photo I used the Spellbinder's embossing stencil on the inside flap too.  I did go back and spray it with the air brush and E53 marker so it matched what I'd done to the focal image a little better.  I added an brown organdy bow to finish the front.  I don't have a Bow Easy so I asked my husband if he'd hold two of my sketch markers so I could tie a bow around them.

All that was left was finishing the inside, I used stamps from Papertrey Ink's Birthday Basics set and a little more rick rack.   

I hope you have some time today to do something fun too!