Lavender Fairy Card

 Despite all the boo-boos, I think this card turned out decent enough to send to a dear friend.  Because I was giving her a birthday gift of a loaf of homemade lavender soap in a vintage floral plate with a vintage butter knife (for slicing the soap), I decided to use my favorite lavender themed stamp. (I collect vintage/Victorian tableware and dishes.)  Initially, I was just going to stamp the image on a Ken Oliver Water-Media Greeting Card (sold at HM Ben Franklin Crafts), but the surface of the card was too bumpy to clearly accept a stamped image. (The Ken Oliver card does have the benefit of being very sturdy so it holds up through lots of layers of watercolors.)  Anyway, I decided to use Kuretake watercolors and paint over the entire front of the card and flicked silver paint on the surface.  This turned out nicely until I noticed that paint seeped into the inside of card...boo hoo!  Saddened, I cut off the card front and trimmed it down to fit a dark purple card.  Next, I stamped the fairy image onto a less bumpy watercolor paper and colored it in with Derwent watercolor pencils.  I like using color pencils because it's easy to color fine line images. After it was all colored in, I simply used a brush with plain water to activate the colors....super easy!  The final touches for this card were to add a little fine crystal glitter to the wings and a dangling bow of fibers from my stash. ( I am so addicted to ribbons, twine, and pretty yarns...I think I need an intervention...LOL!)

 While I am making a card, I often test the inks, sparkle paints, colors, etc. on small scraps that I later turn into tags....waste not want not.  Here is the tag that I plan to attach to the gift to explain a bit about the contents of the package.  I hope you've enjoyed this one post peek into my crafty life.  Please return often to see what else pops out of my mind's eye.  Comments? Blogland is so quiet these days.