Swan Lake Hooked on You Card

Yesterday Mr. Fox was the star.  Today it's Mr. Fish.  I'm not sold that this is a masculine card.   Mind you, it's not frilly like a feminine card could be characterized - but I digress.   It's just that I think women like to fish too.  I like this stamp set - Hooked on You (B1535) - because it can be used for multiple things.  The banner "it's your day" is outlined, meaning there is a Cricut cut that corresponds with it.  In this case, it's the Flower Market Cricut Collection (Z3285 or digitally Z3290 for Design Space abled machines).

Mr. Fish is about to get hooked on this pattern #29 from Make it From Your Heart Volume 2.  Let's talk paper.  The background is White Daisy cardstock that has been embossed with the Wood Slats Embossing Folder (Z3248).  It's hard (if not impossible) to see in the picture, but the wood grain was sponged with Champagne ink (Z2874) to highlight the wood grain.  On top of the White Daisy is a strip of Poppy cardstock (X5779), then Swan Lake B&T (7212B), followed by Glacier cardstock (X5770) all following the pattern's dimensions.

The next layer is a Dotted Whisper B&T from Swan Lake that was stamped in Black (Z2105) with "happy birthday" (I'll add that any of the sayings would be good here).  Black cardstock (1386) mats the White Daisy focal point.  Before the focal point was mounted with Thin 3D foam, it was stamped in Archival Black ink (Z3271), colored with Watercolor Pencils (3505) and blended with the Blending Pen (3174).  I used archival ink because of the blending.  Water based ink would have bled.



Here is a closeup look at my coloring.  There aren't really distinct lines because of the blending.  That's why I like to use that method.  I also like the blending pen over water because of the control, as well as the convenience of pulling the pen out and putting it away without any clean up.  Now, if the area that needed to be blended was larger, then I'd use water.