An Experiment: Day Eleven

Wow, I can't believe we've milked Papertrey's Life for eleven days! I'll have one final post on the set tomorrow, and then we'll move on to other things. But I truly hope that this experiment has inspired you to experiment for yourselves with a single set. Well-designed sets--like Life--can be incredibly versatile and allow you to use lots of different products, color schemes, designs, and techniques for lots of fun!

The final cards utilize backgrounds I painted onto watercolor paper using Twinkling H2Os, which are delightful sparkly watercolors. I started with a watercolor paper block (sheets of watercolor paper glued on the edges into a block), which keeps the paper flat after it dries. After painting an area of the sheet with plain water, I picked up paint on the brush and added it to the wet area. There's no plan when I do this...I just add paint until it looks interesting, let it dry, and hope for the best.

Once dry, I separated the sheet from the block with a butter knife and cut out sections of the painted areas that look pretty.

Today's stamped panel used gold and pink paint because there's a LOT of gold and pink out there on the interwebs right now, and the color combo inspired me. It's so pretty and feminine!

What a stroke of luck that pink lemonade Impress Fresh Ink was a perfect match for the pink peony Twinkling H2O. The Fresh Ink is a pigment ink, so its opacity covered the gold paint well.

The Blogger website is trying to tell me that the previous sentence should say "...it's opacity covered...." Never trust grammar check.

The sentiment and stem of the flower are stamped in Delicata golden glitz. A close-up shows how shimmery and pretty this card is!

Now, you might pick up on the similarities between this layout and the one from Day Two of the Experiment. Here's that card again for contrast.

Note how completely different these two cards feel. The cool, crisp white-on-white card has simple pops of color. The pink-and-gold card is warm and shimmery and far more subtle. There's so different, in fact, it's hard to compare them (although I think we can all agree that the card from Day Two definitely looks more like I made it).

If this experiment has taught me anything, it's that different supplies yield wildly different results...and it's tons of fun to play around with similar layouts to see just how much variation your liberally-stocked craft room can provide!

Supplies 
stamps: Papertrey Life, My Favorite Things Cheerful Blessings
ink: Delicata gold, Impress Fresh Ink pink lemonade
paper: watercolor paper
accessories: Twinkling H2Os, brush, craft foam, glue