It's also a big week for CHA sneak peeks, and I've rounded up a bunch of new ones and posted them over on the CHA 2016 Mega Show sneak page. Lawn Fawn started their sneaks today, and this release is huge! The design team doesn't have most of it yet, so I don't have any projects to show yet using the upcoming items, but I thought this would be a good week to start catching up on some older projects that I haven't blogged yet.
That's my niece, Sophie Clare, along with our new(ish- we got him in August) dog, Holmes, in the photo. Holmes has quite the story, too! He's a rescue from a shelter in Mobile, where he'd been for over 200 days. He had actually been adopted out twice and brought back both times- once because they said he had too much energy, and the other time because they said he wasn't good with children. We must have gotten really lucky, though, because he is great with both my 2 year old nephew and 5 year old niece, and, while he does have his crazy moments, he spends an awful lot of time just sleeping next to (or on) us.
He looks huge in the photo, but he's really only 25 pounds and about 16" tall at the shoulder. He's a Jack Russell mix (we think with Boston Terrier), and we just love him to bits! Holmes and Sophie Clare are great friends, and now any time she stays at our house she insists that he has to sleep in the bed with her and that our basset/lab mix has to also sleep in the room on his doggie bed.
This layout uses the Heart Stackables and Stitched Hearts Stackables dies that were released in December as part of the Valentine's collection along with the new Plastic Flamingo and Fresh Lavender ink pads. The Pink Flamingo color is just amazingly bright and saturated, and I decided to use both new shades to watercolor some embellishments for my page.
I started by swiping each ink pad across a glass mat that I also sometimes use as a watercolor palette. From here it's easy just to pick up some color with a wet brush, and cleanup is simple, too! I quickly washed some color across a piece of watercolor paper, then let it dry before continuing.
I wanted to add a little molding paste for texture, so I pulled out an older Heidi Swapp stencil (I picked this one up at Michaels a year or two ago) and spread a thin layer of paste over it. I peeled the stencil up right away so I could clean it before the paste dried, but I made sure to let the paste on the paper dry before continuing!
Once everything was dry, I used the dies (mostly the larger sizes) to cut hearts out of the paper. The dies cut through the watercolor paper fairly well, but I did have to go in and clean up a few cuts that didn't quite make it through the areas covered by the molding paste. It just made the piece a little too thick for the die to handle, but those spots were pretty easy to fix.
I added some gesso to the layout background to create a focal area, then added sequins and a title cut using the Finley's ABCs dies to finish things off.
I am going to try to blog projects each day this week, but even if I don't make that goal I'll still be updating the sneak peek page. You can look for CHA coverage starting here next week, and possibly this weekend if I have time!
If you are interested in the products that I used in this post, you'll find them linked up below. I do participate in affiliate programs and use those links where possible. If you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links I do earn a small commission, but it doesn't cost you anything extra. The Lawn Fawn products used in this post were provided to me in exchange for design work. The remaining products were my own purchases.
