Art Impressions: Flying High

Hello everyone! :) It's hump day... HUUUUMPPP DAYYY... lol That gets me every time, I am always reminded of the Geiko commercial.  I hope everyone is having a fabulous week; its been hot hot hot here in sunny California, trying to stay out of the heat.  I've been enjoying my summer break thus far, relaxing and organizing while I can; also spending time with the family.   What I have been enjoying most is being able to craft! I Finally had the time to clean out the backroom to make space for a craft area and storage for my crafty items; it was a mess before, but now I have a proper space to put everything, which makes it a breeze to get to.  There still much to go in setting up the space.  My sister is donating her office table and shelving unit to me because she is redoing her office area of her home so that her children could work in there as well.  :)  I got super lucky! YAY to my sister! Until then, I will be working at the kitchen table, but at least I have my craft items stored in the backroom, so there's not a big mess on the dining room table.

Anywho, I was able to have some fun with my Art Impression stamps yesterday.  I was experimenting a bit with the background; it did not turn out how I wanted at first so i had to fix it.  I think it came out okay after, not one of my greatest work, but I had fun creating.  First, I used Gina Marie Designs: Wonky Stitched rectangle die to die cute some Strathmore: Watercolor paper.  I can't tell you how much I love Gina Marie's die's; they are unique in the sense that she comes out with different types of boarders/shapes for her dies, particularly her nested die.  It also helps that the price range is incredibly awesome! Check her out at Scrapbook Outlet: Gina Marie Designs.  After I die cut the watercolor paper I used my MISTI to stamp my image.  I used Art Impressions: Flying High with the lady and man flying in the airplane; it is from the His/Her Series.  Does anyone know if they have names? I've been wondering if they did because I just started using Art Impressions, so when I write my blog about them I always want to put their names.  I had to re-stamp the image about 3 times to get a nice clear (the watercolor paper has a bit of texture, so some spots were not stamping well).  That's why I love using the MISTI, on textured paper like this its always great to be able to stamp it over again to get a better image.  Once I was satisfied with the clarity of the stamped image I used my ziggies to color the images.  I usually use a watercolor brush with i use my ziggies, but I wanted to see how it would look with just the marker color themselves.  Oh man, these color medium has so much color pay off, I had to adjust my color pallet a bit by choosing lighter colors.

 Once I finished coloring the image, I moved onto the background.  I had a bit of trouble with this as I wanted to create some texture using the Zigs, kinda like clouds, but that did not work out and I had to try to find a way to fix it.

I used my aqua brush to lighten and lift the sky blue color I used as much as I could, but still leaving a tint.  I then used my distress inks to create clouds.  It ended up better than before.  I used versafine embossing ink to emboss the sentiment in red.  I used fun foam to pop up the panel onto the base and popped up the sentiment.  Here is the finished card...