Simon Says Stamp Diecember!

 Happy Sunday, friends! I hope that you are having a great day so far! We got a nice blanket of snow yesterday, and it is SO beautiful. I love snow...until about April. And then I'm SO over it....lol!

Simon Says Stamp has deemed this month Diecember, and I am so happy to get to join along for the first time!  There is an amazing Diecember release, packed full of amazing dies that are going to go straight to your wish list {or shopping cart...lol!}

I will scatter posts throughout this month using some of the amazing Diecember 2018 new dies, but for today I am focused on the CUTIE Big Picture Book Latte die. I squealed when I got to this die, because I think it is just the cutest thing ever!! So of course, it was the first thing that I ran through my diecutting machine! It was also perfect timing, because the Fall/Winter Coffee Lovers Blog Hop is going on right now, so I will be linking it up there! Be sure to check it out if you haven't before...tons of prizes, and SO much inspiration!

The first thing that I did was create the background on 130 lb cougar white cardstock panel from Cut Cardstock. I heat embossed the Outline Snowflakes cling rubber stamp to the panel in detail white, gave it a water wash, and then proceeded to drop Pinkfresh Studio liquid watercolor to it. This is the same technique shown in THIS video, but this time around I used much less watercolor and much more water to make the tones lighter. Once the coloring looked how I wanted, I set the entire panel aside to dry naturally. When the panel was fully dry, I did splatter some matching liquid watercolor to the front of it using a size 4 brush.

Next I diecut the Big Picture Book Latte six times from 130 lb cougar white cardstock, and one time from Astrobright Pulsar Pink cardstock. I lightly inked the edges of the pink layer with Picked Raspberry distress ink, then layered it to two of the white cup layers. Then I layered all 6 of the whipped cream layers together, and covered it in Diamond Dust fine art glitter. I felt like the eyes needed to stand out a little bit, so I added a small strip of black cardstock behind them. Then I used a little bit of washi tape on the back to attach the cup & whipped cream, then used a thin line of mixed media glue where the two layers met. {You don't have to do this step, but it helps me when it comes time to placing the latte to the front of my card.}

After that I used two sentiments from the Tiny Words Christmas set to create my custom sentiment, and stamped it to white cardstock in onyx black Versafine. I trimmed it down to a tiny strip, then cut banner edges to each end.

 At this point it was time to start putting the card together. I mounted the watercolor panel to the front of a cougar white A2 card base with foam adhesive. Then I adhered the cutie latte to the front with some permanent tape adhesive & mixed media liquid adhesive - I wanted to make sure that thick cut mug wasn't going anywhere! Then I popped the sentiment strip up with some Darice Thin Foam Strips, and tucked my signature iridescent jewels here & there to finish.

I seriously can't get over how CUTE the Big Picture Book Latte die is....I have a feeling it will be back on my blog again in the near future!!

Well, that is what I have for you today, my friends! Before you move along with your day, I wanted to invite you to follow me on social media. I hang out on Instagram a lot, and share my work in progress in my stories...along with REALLY cute photos of my dogs! :) And of course, I would love for you to subscribe to my YouTube Channel. My channel has been pretty quiet recently - I am right in the middle of reorganizing my entire craft area...so it is a bit disjointed. I have given myself a deadline of the end of December to get it completely finished, with my new studio area ready for video creation!! So, there will be a TON more videos in 2019. So thank you for bearing with me until then!

INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE

 

I hope that you have a wonderful & restful Sunday!

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!}