Lotsa Hellos

I had a bazillion packages to ship out last week, and the only reason it took me so long to get to the Post Office was I felt the need to make a card for each package. As a stamper, I can't send a package with a note scrawled on a post-it note, right?

So I set to work. I opted to use my new favorite technique of stamping a background onto water color paper using an acrylic block. The fun part is that it never comes out the same twice.

Here's one of my cards, then I'll explain:

I used my mini Distress ink pads to apply ink to an acrylic block, misted it, then stamped it onto watercolor paper. The inks didn't blend as well as I'd hoped, but that's okay! I'm even okay that it went outside the lines a little. I trimmed it down and put it on a white card base.

Then I decided it needed a black die-cut Hello, so I cut one black and four white and stacked them up. Crooked. The white shows too much, but oh, well.

Here are the other two I made with this same ink and technique:

I just re-inked the block with the same inks in about the same places, spritzed and stamped. The one on the right I obviously turned upside-down when I put it on the card base. I like to live on the edge.

I also spritzed each of them with pearlized mist so they are very sparkly and shiny in real life. Here's my attempt to show you the shine plus the Glossy Accented words:

I might have used a LOT of the mist. So shiny!

I made a fourth one, but first I have to tell you I'm crippled in the paper trimmer department. My Fiskars trimmer (the one with the wire) died on me during my recent crafty weekend. Stoopid wire frayed and is unusable. My large guillotine cutter doesn't have near the precision or line-up-ability as the wire one (or it's operator error), so trimming is not a fun thing for me right now. I got the first three trimmed okay, but this next one became very small:

A mere shadow of its former self. I had to matte it and everything. This one also got a spec of blue on the top white edge, but I spent so much time making it, I'm going with "I meant to do that". All these cards are smaller than A2, but this one came out even smaller.

Then I switched up the colors and made two more in this color combination:

I didn't get the best impression with this one, but then I didn't spritz too much water because these colors work together for me, but I didn't want them to blend. That might have been ugly. I was hoping for more of an uneven flow-y look, and I think I got close.

Do you know why purple is my second least-favorite color? It's because I find it impossible to match purples. Check out this next card:

The Distress Faded Lilac goes with none of the Hero Arts layering papers I have, and I'm pretty sure I've purged all my other purples. I finally broke into my My Favorite Things card stock sampler, and found this Grape Jelly was pretty close, or at least in the right purple family. Maybe. Perhaps I should have used the lighter purple. Hmmm. I may still change that paper. I'm getting really good at taking these cards apart. ;/

I actually tried to make my own paper by inking some white card stock with the Faded Lilac ink pad, but it met a sad end when I trimmed it crooked and it had to be discarded. That's when I opted for the MFT Grape Jelly. For some reason I didn't want to use black.

Once again, the matte was necessary because I was forced to trim the water color paper quite small. I finally gave up and used my Lawn Fawn Stitched Journal Card die to get it even, and it was so small it needed a background color. All that futzing with matching purples was about 30 minutes of my life I won't get back. And no, I have no plans to collect every color and shade of purple so I'll be more prepared next time. Nope. I just won't use purple. :)

You'll notice I broke out a different Hello die, mostly so I could say I used them both, finally.

Another trauma during this crafting session was the number of words I needed to die-cut to stack them. WHAT was I thinking? The first set of Hellos have all white with a top layer of black. I did such a poor job lining up the stack for the second Hello die that I had to color the edges with a black marker. When I cut out the second set for that last card, I got smart and cut them all out of black. MUCH easier!

By the time I'd finished all of these, I decided they all - ALL - needed Glossy Accents, so I glopped them up and went to bed. The next morning I wrote messages in all of the cards, put them in the packages, and delivered everything to the Post Office. Hopefully they will arrive at their destinations today.

And yes, I am aware I just talked about mailing cards. Hey, it happens. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used: misc black cad stock, Co'ordinations Foundation Canvas Texture Gulf Stream 12x12 card stock, and hte following:

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