Have an awesome b-day

 Some cards seem to come naturally and others can be a real struggle. This next one did NOT come easy! I had this idea of creating a watercolor stamped image. To do this I wanted to watercolor a piece of cardstock and then stamp on top of this with Versamark and clear heat emboss it to create a resist for the dark ink I wanted to sponge over it. Sounds like a solid plan, right? What followed was quite a bit of trial and error.

I started off quite happily and used the 'awesome' stamp from the Off the Wall stamp set from Kaisercraft, but soon found out that the light blue watercolor paint showed through the Soft Navy ink from Simon Says Stamp. I went ahead and stamped the word 'have' with Unicorn white pigment ink from Hero Arts using the Back to Basics Alphabet from Stampin' Up. Next I heat embossed it with white embossing powder, but I forgot to first use my EK powder tool, so the white powder ended up pretty much everywhere. I figured it was time to start over. I now laid the stamp on the paper where I wanted it and traced the outline with a pencil. Next I masked this area off to only get the watercolor paint on this area. Soon I found out that I'm a messy painter and I splattered all over the top and bottom of my cardstock. *sigh* Time for a third try. The photo's below show the results of my first two attempts.

Okay, so below is the watercoloring of my third attempt. So far so good. Next I went about stamping and heat embossing the 'Awesome' stamp and sponging the Soft Navy over it as before.

Next up were the white letters. When I got to the first 'A' I was distracted (little sleep and newborn baby around are a bad mix) and I mistook the 'V' for an 'A'. Noooo!!! ...or maybe it looks alright? I decided I did not want to start over again at this point and went ahead with the rest of the text. The rest of the text 'have an' went alright, though I still got some white embossing powder on the wrong place. I think I need to be more generous with the EK powder tool. When I got to the 'B day' text things went pretty bad again. I took the 'V' stamp to get the 'A' in place but I didn't stamp it upside down, leaving me with the word 'B dvy'. *cries* I tried wiping the ink off and I sponged some extra Soft Navy ink over it, which caused I nice dark circle that would not go away. At this point I was so frustrated with this card that I just wanted to finish it and quit. So I just went ahead and stamped the 'B day' text again and heat embossed it. I added some stars with the Lots of Stars stamp set from Simon Says Stamp (this is absolutely my new favorite!) and finished it off with some sequins and enamel dots. I stuck the whole onto a navy blue double fold base card.

Here is a closer look at the mess I made! Maybe when the frustration this card caused has worn off some I will try this technique again, because I do like how the 'Awesome' sentiment came out!

This card is entered in this week's Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge which requires the use of a Simon Says Stamp brand product.