Park Life...

Hello friends...

Hope you've had a wonderful weekend and the sun has been shining for you! Can you believe we're heading towards May already? Where did the last four months go? Time sure has flown in lockdown but as we start another new week, it's time for the brand new Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge and this week, we'd love for you to join us for our theme, ADD A QUOTE!

We all have to make a special card from time to time and last week we celebrated my Dad's birthday, and yes he was 21 again, lol!!!! So armed with Tim Holtz and Sizzix Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 releases plus an older die set thrown in, I created this card full of dimension, and layers and with a particular theme in mind. As a baby, I just never slept and my parents will tell you, I was a nightmare, lol ~ I think I aged them in those first few months of my life because if I was awake, so were they ~ doing everything they could to get me to sleep! But the one thing that my Dad always did, was sing to me and the song that he always turned too was, 'You Are My Sunshine'. Sometimes it worked...sometimes it didn't but he always hoped that this was the day, because as the quote chip says, "today is full of possibilities"!

So, let's get started and here's what I did..

Starting with the background, which is a piece of Distress watercolour card, cut to measure 10 x 16cm. I then spritzed it with a light misting of water before adding Speckled Egg, Antique Linen and Old Paper Distress Inks to my glass mat, adding a mist of water to the inks and then dipping my card in and out of the inks to pick up little pools of the individual colours on the card. Between each of the colours, I heat dried the card and re-dipped before drying the panel thoroughly with a heat gun.

After machine stitching a border around the edge of the panel, I matted it onto green card, lightly sanded with a sanding tool, or sand paper. This card is from the Cool Kraft Stack.

I mounted the layered panels using foam pads onto a piece of card, which I applied strips of design tape to around each of the four edges. If you haven't got design tape, don't worry as any of Tim's patterned papers will work with this. I matted the layers onto a panel of black card, taken from the Neutrals Kraft Stack, again sanded for more of a distressed feel, before mounting onto my black card blank.

Now that the base is ready, it's time to start die cutting and for this card I used a combination of Circle Play, Flower Field, and The Park. These are all dies by Tim Holtz for Sizzix.

Starting with the big bright yellow sun and this is from the Circle Play Thinlit die set, cut from watercolour card and coloured with a combination of Mustard Seed and Squeezed Lemonade Distress Spray Stains. 

When you cut the image of the sun, you will have two separate pieces, the rays and the centre, and because I wanted to add foam pads to the back, I placed these onto a circle of card, the same size as the circle in the centre of the rays and adhered my two pieces onto this. I then attached the sun onto my background.

Moving onto the flower field. This is cut from watercolour card, again cutting it three separate times to create a really thick die cut, resembling a piece of chipboard.

I then layered each of the pieces to create my flower field using Matte Collage Medium as my choice of adhesives. Once the medium was dry, I watercolored the image with Distress Re-inkers. Drop a small droplet of the colour onto your glass mat or onto a palette and then using a water brush, I hand coloured them. To add a few details to the centres of some of the flowers I used a black and a white fine detail pen and just created a few dots.

I attached the finished flower field along the bottom of my background panel, using foam pads that I placed on the wide bottom edge of the die cut.

I then took a Theories Quote Chip, 'Today Is Full of Possibilities'. I sanded the edges of the chip and inked them with Walnut Stain before attaching it across the bottom of my flower field die cut using Matte Collage Medium.

On either side of the chip, I adhered Hardware Heads, coloured with Mustard Seed Distress Paint.

Moving onto my gentleman from The Park, I cut him from black kraft stack card, taken from the Neutrals Kraft Stock pack. I cut this three separate times and then layered each piece to create one substantial die cut figure. I then lightly sanded the surface of the top layer before adding white pen details to highlight the buttons on his jacket.

I repeated this with the kite, also from The Park die set and again cut from black kraft card, before I then cutting the tiny little butterflies that are in the top right hand corner from gold metallic kraft stash.

Attach the silhouette and the kite using foam pads for even more dimension and height and placing him to stand on the quote chip. I then added small clumps of moss around the base of his feet.

To complete the card, I added a Specimen Remnant Rub, No. 365, 302 in the top right hand corner...

...adding the tiny gold die cut butterflies beneath it, attaching them between the number and the silhouette.

For the finishing touch, I added some small sequins, placing them around the butterflies.

Finally, I added a quote stencil chip in the top left hand corner. I cut the chip in half and clipped it to the card using a Tiny Clip.

So that's my card finished and I hope you've been inspired by the dies I've used to make it. As always, if you make anything that you've seen on my blog, then just tag me on social media or leave a comment here, I will be over as soon as I can to take a look!

Don't forget that every week, one lucky random participant has the chance to win a $25 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp and you can join in up to 5 times, which means you could have 5 chances to win. You have until Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in and good luck....

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by today ~ stay safe and keep well.

Love Emma xxx

Recipe for project:

Tim Holtz/Sizzix: Flower Field, The Park, Circle Play

Sizzix Limoncello Sequins and Beads

Distress Inks: Walnut Stain, 

Distress Re-Inkers: Peeled Paint, Bundled Sage, Iced Spruce, Crackling Campfire, Mustard Seed, Tumbled Glass, Picked Raspberry

Distress Spray Stains; Antique Linen, Speckled Egg, Old Paper, Mustard Seed, Squeezed Lemonade

Distress Paints: Mustard Seed

Tim Holtz Idea-ology: Theories Quote Chips, Hardware Heads, Specimen Remnant Rubs, Tiny clip, Stencil Chip

Mediums: Matte Collage Medium, 

Surfaces: Distress Watercolour Card, Cool Kraft Stock, Neutral Kraft Stock, Black Card, Metallic Kraft Stock

Glass Media Mat

Tim Holtz Fine Detail Waterbrush and Broad Waterbrush

Blending Tool

Heat Gun

Big Shot Die Cutting Machine

Moss