[12.7.2014] surprise SPARKS fun with Paper Smooches

Do you love surprises?

I LOVE little surprises, like this one. I’m guest designing with the Paper Smooches SPARKS challenge this month!!! Yay. I have an EXTRA special place in my heart for Paper Smooches and am EXCITED to be playing along with the amazing Design Team again for December.

This week’s challenge…

Time crunch for holiday cards. The anything goes challenge is the PERFECT incentive to get the last few done. I thought I’d play around with the birch trees from Autumn Groves and turn them into a winter scene with a bit of water coloring. I cut my piece of water-color friendly paper and then stamped my trees with Hero Hues chalk ink. It holds up to water-color quite nicely. I also stamped my little bird (from Warm Hearts) and colored him with water-color as well. To build up color and add shading, just let the water-color dry and then add some more color over top to intensive it.

I didn’t have much light when taking my photo. It was a cloudy and kinda rainy day yesterday. But, there is a ton of sparkle to the trees. Once it was fully dry, I used some Sheer Shimmer spray on top and then some Smooches ink brushed on the little snowflakes. As that dried, I diecut my gold frame from glitter paper and added it to the top.

Before adhering my tree scene flat to the card, I layered some patterned paper behind. Lastly, I die cut my banner with the PS Streamers die and then embossed my sentiment from Joyful Greetings in white. I added some tiny foam adhesive behind the sentiment and then used the cardinal bird to help add some lift to the sentiment as well.

Check out the other girls sharing their SPARKS cards this week too.

Now it is your turn to come and play!!! Just CLICK HERE to find out all the details and to link up your project.