A Drive in the Desert

*Compensated affiliate links used where possible at zero cost to you. No posts are ever sponsored or paid.*

Happy Friday! (If you're reading this on Friday!)

I'm going to just be a TERRIBLE blogger and not tell you the secret to how I made today's card until Monday, but it should be pretty obvious that the new Hero Arts Kit that's coming out IS MY JAM.

Y'all know how I feel about the desert, and you are not going to BELIEVE the variety of looks you can get with this puppy.

The art just keeps getting better and better! If this one doesn't win the end of year Favorites vote, I'm not speaking to anyone ever again! If you're not a subscriber yet, you can check out the details here.

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CURRENT COUPON CODES
20% off anything at Glassboard Studio  - UNDERSTANDBLUE.
15% off anything at Marker Universe or any of their other sites - Understandblue15.
10% off at Sweet Sentiment with code UNDERSTANDBLUE
10% off the whole store at A Colorful Life Designs - LydiaFan10
5% off at LBC here with code LYDIA5
Arkon Mounts - 20% off sitewide with code UNDERSTANDBLUE

I'll be back with more on Monday!

Have a great weekend.

Loveyameanitbye.

Water Lilies: Plants vs. Zombies

*Compensated affiliate links used where possible at zero cost to you. No posts are ever sponsored or paid.*

Do you play Plants vs. Zombies? I don't play much anymore, but it's a great game, and a fun way to be mindless if you're stressed out. 

I remembered while I was masking and stamping these stunning water lilies, that in the game, they are true to what they are named for in Greek mythology - nymphs. The botanical name is nymphaea. Like mermaids, these were beautiful, but deadly water spirits that could pull you under the water to your death, as they were the appointed protectors of the ponds they live in. 

As usual, when you break these cautionary tales down to their essence, there's a lesson in there. Water lilies grow in ponds with thick mud, which can indeed trap a person and drown them. 

It's probably a good idea to leave these beauties, like most of nature, undisturbed! I'll make an exception for poison ivy and scorpions, of course.

In our town's botanical garden there are STUNNING water lily ponds, and not far from my house there's a natural spring that makes itself known if the weather conditions are right, and a little low area fills up with water, water lilies, and buzzes with dragonflies. 

For that reason, I ALMOST added a dragonfly to this card, but when I finished masking and stamping three images from this beautiful set, I decided to let them enjoy the spotlight. They do have matching dies - but since I collaged them, I fussy cut.

In the background, I used a brayer cleaning sheet and used the Fizzy stencil with sparkle Hero paste for a bubble feeling - you'll see it better in the closeup - but it's so pretty in real life. The sentiment is from the same set.

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See how fun the sparkly bubbles are? I colored the whole thing with OLO Markers.

CURRENT COUPON CODES

20% off anything at Glassboard Studio  - UNDERSTANDBLUE.
15% off anything at Marker Universe or any of their other sites - Understandblue15.
10% off at Sweet Sentiment with code UNDERSTANDBLUE
10% off the whole store at A Colorful Life Designs - LydiaFan10
5% off at LBC here with code LYDIA5
Arkon Mounts - 20% off sitewide with code UNDERSTANDBLUE

Namaste!

Loveyameanitbye.

We're All Mad Here

*Compensated affiliate links used where possible at zero cost to you. No posts are ever sponsored or paid.*

It should come as no surprise that I'm a HUGE Lewis Carroll fan. My dad read us ALL the books, dozens of times. His copy of Alice was the annotated one with all the chessboards, etc. If you don't have that version - get it!

Like the Hobbit, the illustrations were just marvelous and they always looked new to me, even if it was our 100th time hearing the story. 

My favorite character, bar none, was the Cheshire Cat. The spookiness was just over the top, but also the sort of smart alecky thing that most of the characters had, the Cheshire Cat had in spades. So fun. 

Today, my friend Mary Ann, and the illustrator of the Clarence images, has a wonderful Alice-themed series of character sets, one of which features this amazing Cheshire cat! 

First, I used this foil plate to emboss a piece of watercolor paper. (I don't foil much, but I LOVE foil plates for texture.) Then I sprayed magenta, yellow and turquoise acrylic sprays on my craft mat and brayered them lightly over that panel so the pattern popped out. I also spritzed it a few times after that with the three colors. Then, I colored the kitty with OLO markers, and cut him out with his matching dies. I embossed the sentiment from this set in white alabaster embossing powder - look how crispy it is! I never used to get embossing that crisp - I give all credit to the embossing brush of hers. I think that clay is slicker than cornstarch or whatever is in the little pillows.

My favorite sentiment in this set is "when you can't look at the bright side, I'll sit with you in the dark."

I colored the edges of the die cut black to match the circle and added some white gel pen highlights.

He's got a little Tigger vibe with his twisty tail!

She also has two beautiful scenic stamps to use all these characters in: A tea party scene, and this AWESOME castle scene. 

Inspired by the sentiment I called out above, I wanted to make a nighttime scene, with the castle shining a little beacon. 

First, I colored the mushrooms, the path and the castle with OLO markers. Then I used masking tape to make little beams coming from the side windows, and I lightly blended Metropolis and Wild Dandelion inks over the scene. 

It's impossible to see in this photo but I added Sparkle lacquer to the white spots on mushrooms in the front, and added the Hugs die cut with black glitter paper.

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CURRENT COUPON CODES
20% off anything at Glassboard Studio  - UNDERSTANDBLUE.
15% off anything at Marker Universe or any of their other sites - Understandblue15.
10% off at Sweet Sentiment with code UNDERSTANDBLUE
10% off the whole store at A Colorful Life Designs - LydiaFan10
5% off at LBC here with code LYDIA5
Arkon Mounts - 20% off sitewide with code UNDERSTANDBLUE

Here are all the supplies I used today:

Wonderland 3 4x6 – The Rabbit Hole... [ THR ] Wonderland 3 Dies – The Rabbit Hole... [ THR ] Heard in Wonderland 4x6 – The Rabbit... [ THR ] Path to the Castle Background 6x6 –... [ THR ] Wonderland 2 4x6 – The Rabbit Hole... [ THR ] Wonderland 2 Dies – The Rabbit Hole... [ THR ] Wonderland 1 4x6 – The Rabbit Hole... [ THR ] Wonderland 1 Dies – The Rabbit Hole... [ THR ] Tea Party Background 6x6 – The Rabbit... [ THR ] Hugs - Scripty Word with Shadow Layer... [ THR ] Garden Trellis Hot Foil Coverplate –... [ THR ] OLO [ OLM ] Cottontail Embossing Powder Tool –... [ THR ] NK351 Sparkle Clear Lacquer Pen |... [ HA ] Brutus Monroe ALABASTER Ultra Fine... [ SSS | SSS | SBC ] Sakura Gelly Roll Opaque White Pens -... [ BLIC ] Dina Wakley Media Gloss Spray -... [ JGG ] Dina Wakley Media Gloss Spray - Lemon [ JGG ] Dina Wakley Media Gloss Spray -... [ JGG ] PS777 Glitter Paper Basics - Hero Arts [ HA ] DI199 Nesting Circle Infinity Dies... [ HA ] Floral Glass Craft Mat — Glassboard... [ GLS ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSP | ELH ] Scor-Buddy Mini Scoring Board 9x7.5 -... [ ELH ] MIS-T Rulers [ MSP ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Understand Blue Bundles Specials for... [ CTC ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH ] Storage Envelopes, Medium 25pk,... [ ELH ] CheckOutStore Stamp & Die Clear... [ CHC ] Extra Large -50 pk, Avery Elle Stamp... [ ELH ] Airtable: Organize your stamps & dies [ ART ] Amazon.com: The Annotated Alice:... [ AMZUS ]

I didn't do any cooking this weekend at all. I had already made chili, hummus, cauliflower salad and refried beans last week, so that was enough for us to survive for a few days without turning the oven on. I had more than a few cold meals with the salad, hummus and kalamata olives because it's just hot. One night I had guacamole for dinner. PS - Mezzetta has the BEST kalamata olives. My goodness. 

Did you know that avocados basically have eternal life in the fridge? I put them in my drawer section of the fridge and they SLOWLY ripen and NEVER turn brown. An amazing life hack I wish I'd learned years ago.

This week, I'm going to make a tri tip roast - marinate it in that homemade Italian dressing - same one from the salad - and have that all week. So a single oven session again. This is the first year since I've lived here that I've wished for a mild Gulf hurricane to break this bizarre pattern. It's a battle every day for every plant in my yard, and they've already been through so much with the last two winters. I only need one extreme season per year, not two. And our water bill is insane. 

What are you cooking this week?

Loveyameanitbye.

Let it Run! + Big Sale

*Compensated affiliate links used where possible at zero cost to you. No posts are ever sponsored or paid.*

Oh boy - Ann's first challenge this week is right up my alley - it's called "let it run." Such an arty look, and different every time. If I really think back, this is probably MOST stampers' introduction to watercolor and its properties, honestly. That and ink smooshing.

Instead of watercolor, I decided to use paint sprays, because they dry shiny, and that's a totally different, fun look for water-reactive mediums.

I used fuchsia, yellow and turquoise sprays after using Hero Paste with this mosaic stencil on hot press watercolor paper. Then I just kept spritzing it with water until it started to move and blend. I kept some areas untouched by water to preserve that fun spray texture so the whole thing wasn't smooth. 

Then I cut a white and black sentiment with this die and layered them for a drop shadow.

While I was doing this I was thinking this would be an EXCELLENT way to do multiples of Christmas cards - they'll all be unique (so I wouldn't get bored making them, and I could use a bunch of stencils and paste one day, and all the sprays the next. So that's something to consider. 

Like this post? Never miss a post by following me!

CURRENT COUPON CODES

20% off anything at Glassboard Studio  - UNDERSTANDBLUE.
15% off anything at Marker Universe or any of their other sites - Understandblue15.
10% off at Sweet Sentiment with code UNDERSTANDBLUE
10% off the whole store at A Colorful Life Designs - LydiaFan10
5% off at LBC here with code LYDIA5
Arkon Mounts - 20% off sitewide with code UNDERSTANDBLUE

Here are all the supplies I used today:

Everyday Sayings Dies - Concord & 9th [ C&9 ] SA049 Floral Filigree Stencil Pair |... [ HA ] NK352 Hero Paste 4oz. | Hero Arts [ HA ] Dina Wakley Media Gloss Spray - Orchid [ JGG ] Dina Wakley Media Gloss Spray - Lemon [ JGG ] Dina Wakley Media Gloss Spray -... [ JGG ] Floral Glass Craft Mat — Glassboard... [ GLS ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSP | ELH ] Scor-Buddy Mini Scoring Board 9x7.5 -... [ ELH ] MIS-T Rulers [ MSP ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Understand Blue Bundles Specials for... [ CTC ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH ] Storage Envelopes, Medium 25pk,... [ ELH ] CheckOutStore Stamp & Die Clear... [ CHC ] Extra Large -50 pk, Avery Elle Stamp... [ ELH ] Airtable: Organize your stamps & dies [ ART ]

Honey Bee Stamps is having a ginormous sale on the whole Christmas in July Category here

15% off - good through Sunday!

Loveyameanitbye.