Encre, papier, ciseaux: I Couldn't Pick a Better Friend Than You

Inspiration: Mojo Monday #539 + Just Us Girls #541

I wanted to craft the other night and I had trouble deciding where to start, so on a whim, I decided to stamp some of the Stamping Bella images I've recently acquired dies for and to test out my Gansai Tambi watercolors. I've acquired those a couple of years ago and I'm mainly used them for backgrounds, and not so much to watercolor stamped images. I was curious to see wat kind of results I could get, so I tested them out on two different images.

This was the first image I colored. It was an interesting challenge, as the watercolor kit does not have skin tones per se, so I had to blend color to the best of my abilities. I based the outfit colours on an old 4½" x 6½" paper pad from Stampin' Up! called Fresh Prints. When I saw the Just Us Girls, I realized it used the colors from the papers, minus the red, so I picked the patterned that only had kraft, white and aqua and based on the Mojo Monday sketch, I came up with this card.

I was looking for a sentiment that I could fit on a banner at the top and when I saw "I couldn't have picked a better friend than you," it seemed like a good pair to my colored image. For the strip at the bottom I used white cardstock and embossed it with the Pretty Print embossing folder, under which I added a piece of ruffled ribbon. The sentiment was embossed in white on Crumb Cake cardstock and I added a aqua button threaded with white baker's twine. Little candy dots were added as well.

Supplies
Stamps: Huggy Squidgies (Stamping Bella); Ravissant Bouquet (Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Thick Whisper White, Crumb Cake, Fluid 100 Watercolor Paper
Designer Series Paper Stack: Fresh Prints
Ink: Jet Black (StazOn)
Accessories: Pretty Print Embossing Folder, Stampin' Dimensionals (Stampin' Up!);
Outside IN Stitched Rectangle Stackables Dies (Lawn Fawn); Watercolors (Gansai Tambi);
Circle Double Stitched Dies (Art Impressions); Huggy Squidgies Dies (Stamping Bella);
A2 Seafoam Envelope (envelopes.com)