My Favorite Things: Up, Up, Up Scenes

Hello Everyone!
Happy Mother's day! Today I will be featuring two cards using MFT's Up in the Air.  The first, my co-worker had asked me to make a graduation card for her cousin who is graduating from USC.  I started by laying out my design on the card base and figuring out what I wanted to do.  I find I have been a bit more organized when I do this.

Once I figured out my layout, I cut out my matting for the card.  I used the USC colors for the matting, while I was at it, I die cut my hill as well as using MFT's basic stitch lines (I used the regular stitch) to put stitching around my main card piece. I then stamped out my images with Simon Says Intense Black Ink as I wanted to Copic color my images.  I tried to incorporate some more of the USC colors on the images.  Once I finished coloring I fussing cut the images out.  I then used Distress Inks (Mowed Lawn and Twisted Citron) to ink blend my boarder hill.  I then used Tumbled Glass to ink blend some clouds out onto the main card.  Most of the images were glued down flat, however, I popped up the balloon image.  I stamped a sentiment with Versafine Onyx Black and embossed with clear ink.

My next card was a labor of love.  I really wanted to do a one layered card with the same stamp set and had an idea of what I wanted to do.  At first I was toying with the sky color; did I want to do a cloud sky? I do like the look of the cloud sky but I wanted to do something a bit different for this card, so I google searched sky at different times in the day and I loved the sun set sky and wanted to mimic it.  I started by laying out my card by stamping the images on a scrap piece of paper and labeling which would be in front/back.  Then I stamped and fussy cut masks for my images.

After all my images had a mask I masked off the sky area to do my grass area by ink blending Distress Ink colors (Evergreen Bough and Cracked Pistachio).  After distressing the grass area, I asked it off to do the sky.  I took inspiration from some google images and came up with some distress colors (Antique Linen, Victorian Velvet, Seedless Preserves, Chipped Sapphire, and Black Soot).   Once the sky was distressed I then used the MFT stencil Radiating Rays to create a sun setting behind the house.

I was finally able to unmask everything and Copic color my images.  I did have a bit of a problem with my clouds.  I shouldn't have masked them because they were so stark white it would have been better to blend it in with the sky, but I solved this by lightly distressing it with the colors of the sky.  I opted to use darker colors for the trees and homes as it was at night.

I hope you like my cards. :)