MIM#153 - Watercolored Backgrounds w/ Heat Embossed Sentiments

Good morning friends.  The challenge at Papertrey Ink's Make it Monday this week is to use a watercolored background and then heat emboss your sentiment on top of the watercoloring.  I love to watercolor, but this was new to me to do the background and not the actual image on the card.  I have to admit it took me awhile to come up with something I liked, and although it is still pretty simple for me, it is not the look I think Dawn McVey was going for with her cards and video, which you can check out here .   Here's what I came up with:

I watercolored my background with just a plain green, and then stamped over the background with PTI's "Daydreamer" stamp set, using the Poppy flower image with Real Red ink and Gumball Green ink for the stems.  I heat embossed my sentiment (PTI's "Boutique Borders: Thanks" stamp set) with white embossing powder.  If you click on the image, you'll be better able to see the sentiment.  I also used my new Lil Inkers circle dies to give a little more visual interest, and also added a bit of red and white bakers twine (The Twinery) to the bottom of the card.  Very simple, but I have to admit that I really kind of like it...thanks Dawn for taking me out of my comfort zone! :0) 

I also thought I'd show you my first attempt at this technique:

After watching Dawn's video, my first thought was to do a blue background to look like water.  I loved the look, but I wanted to put a boat on the water and don't own a PTI stamp of a boat (95% of all my PTI stamps are flowers!!).  I didn't really have a PTI sentiment stamp either to go with water and a boat, although I did end up using the "Celebrating" stamp from PTI's "Big Birthday Wishes" on vellum.  I really liked how this turned out, but just didn't feel comfortable about entering it in a PTI contest when everything but the sentiment was SU! product.  Hence the back to the drawing board, and creating a new card!  All's well that ends well, as I now have 2 cards instead of just one, and one of them is a masculine one, which is a definite bonus for me as I tend to make more "pretty" cards than "guy" cards!

Well I've rambled on enough for today!  Thanks so much for stopping by and hope you all have a wonderful weekend! :0)