Encre, papier, ciseaux: Guest Designer for Global Design Project

Inspiration: Global Design Project #174

I have been really lucky lately and was extended another Guest Designer invitation, this time by the Global Design Project team. They sent me their latest sketch and I went looking through my latest purchases for inspiration. Let It Ride is one of the stamp sets that immediately drew me in when looking at the new Occasions catalogue. Can you believe that after over 15 years as a stamper, this is my first horse set? It's a good one to have, for masculine cards, but also because one of my colleagues who purchases cards from me has a horse herself and likes to give cards to her friends from the stable. I have a feeling she'll be enjoying cards made with this set.

For some reason, the first idea that popped into my head after selecting this set was stamping it on Crumb Cake cardstock and using Distress Oxide inks to watercolor it. I've been collecting Oxide inks since they started coming out, but had not watercolored with them just yet. Because they are hybrid ink, I knew the pigment would look lovely on a kraft-colored cardstock. Because it's not watercolor paper, though, blending the ink is a little trickier and you have to watch your water flow to make sure the cardstock does not buckle. I will say this: halfway through watercoloring the scene, I started assuming the piece would end up a practice piece and would not make it on a finished card. I've learned years ago that it's okay to try out things and discard cardstock - it's not expensive and it's how you grow your skills, so based off of that, I kept going just to practice some more. It was when I watercolored the horse that I changed my mind and decided that this scene had some potential after all!

I wanted to use the new Well Written dies (in its French version), so I pulled those out. Because the horse image was quite large and I didn't want to hide it (I was proud of my watercoloring, I wanted to show it off!), I picked a shorter word and moved the sentiment strip to the left rather than have it centered. The Framelits set includes not only words but images as well, and the image dies became inspiration to embellish the background. I embossed the cardstock with the Subtle 3D Embossing Folder first and then layered die-cut flowers over it. The flowers would have been too short to show up on both edges, so I cut them in the middle and glued the pieces along the top and bottom edge of my embossed cardstock to make then appear longer. The flourish was added to the oval to fill the space a bit, and I used a Gold Foil Paper scrap on my desk to mat the bottom of my sentiment piece to mimick the scallops on the sketch. I found some old Copper cord Stampin' Up! used to carry to wrap around my center piece (embossed with the Basket Weave 3D folder), to go with the orange cardstock nicely.

I drew my colour inspiration from an old ColourQ challenge combo.

Supplies
Stamps: Let It Ride (Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Crumb Cake, Bashful Blue, Pumpkin Pie, More Mustard, Gold Foil (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: Rich Cocoa (Memento); Rusty Hinge, Vintage Photo, Ground Espresso,
Peeled Paint, Shabby Shitters, Antique Linen, Tumbled Glass (Distress Oxide - Ranger)
Big Shot:
Accessories: Basket Weave 3D Embossing Folder, Subtle 3D Embossing Folder, Aqua Painter Brushes,
Les bons mots Framelits, Copper Cord, Neutrals Candy Dots, Stampin' Dimensionals (Stampin' Up!);
A2 Oak Woodgrain Envelope (envelopes.com); Stitched Oval Stackables Dies (Lawn Fawn)