Ellen Hutson LLC's 11th Anniversary Blog Hop

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!!  I am participating in a special blog hop today, celebrating the 11th Anniversary of Ellen Hutson LLC!  We are featuring our favorite Essentials By Ellen products, and I am so excited to share my projects with you!

There are multiple prizes up for grabs, and multiple days of blog hops & posts...so be sure to get all of the details at the Ellen Hutson LLC blog!

In true blog hop fashion, you should have arrived from Lisa Adametz's blog.  I will give you your next stop at the end of the post!

To create my cards, I used the Modern Christmas stamps & the Modern Christmas matching dies....and LOVE how they turned out.  Here is a peek!

All of my backgrounds were created using Tim Holtz distress inks (all colors linked below), and watercolor smooshing.  I love the randomness of watercolor smooshing, because you never know what you are going to get when you turn the paper over!  I typically create about 5 backgrounds.  This time 3 of them turned out!!

All of my cards have a shaker element to them using the Modern Christmas dies.  For my first card, I let the watercolor background dry and then spraying it with gold Color Shine.  I let that dry too, which doesn't take long, and then created my shaker element with the holly leaf die.

All of the diecut elements were used somewhere on these cards, because I didn't want to waste any of the amazing watercolor pieces.  I also diecut some elements from one of the backgrounds I created that didn't look amazing as a whole, but still had some beautiful watercolor features to it!

And of course, I accented with my signature jewels tucked here & there!

For my next card, I focused on the wreath!   After creating the shaker element, I decided that I needed to stamp the wreath image to it as well.  So, I stamped it directly to the acetate sheet in golden glitz pigment ink.  Do this step at the very end, because it will take a very long time to dry. 

 I stamped the sentiment to a banner strip that I cut from one of the watercolor panels that didn't make the cut!  Once again, I tucked pretty jewels here & there.

 Isn't the shaker element pretty?!!  Love it!

This third card was a last minute, happy accident.  I almost discarded this background....but as it sat there, it grew on me.  And now I think it might be my favorite!  I love that it is a little bit softer than the rest - I think I used more water on this one than the others when smooshing it.

 I also realized how beautiful the watercolor was on the diecut wreath from the card above, and felt it HAD to be used.  I brushed it with my clear Wink of Stella glitter pen once adhered to the card front...and the added shimmer is GORGEOUS!

All of the cards have a similar design principle, which made it easy to put them together!  And of course...I added my signature jewels to this one as well!

I really wanted it to have it's own sentiment, so I just masked off and used one word from each of the other sentiments in the stamp set.  This is an easy way to get even more out of your stamps!!

Those are my cards for today's hop!  I hope you enjoyed them!  If you have any questions at all, leave them in the comments...and I will answer them!

Your next stop on the hop is to Heather Meeson's blog!  Have an amazing time on the hop, and being inspired by all the amazing Ellen Hutson products that have been used!!

SUPPLY LIST

For your shopping convenience, all products are linked below. {Includes affiliate linking where possible - this allows small compensation for me at no cost to you.  Never fear - I will only ever link to products that I truly love & use!}