VIDEO: June 2015 Release Week Day 2

Hello everyone, it's Joni and I want to welcome you back to Day 2 Wplus9 June 2015 Release Week! Today I want to share with you the second stamp set that I have collaborated with Dawn on - Happy Mail. It was so fun to create the adorable images in this set and we hope that you will enjoy them too. :)

The Happy Mail stamp set has 21 images, 5 sentiments, and a companion die containing 13 individual dies.

For my first project I want to show you in a video how fun it is to watercolor some of the images and use them to create a sweet scene.

To begin, I adhered the striped patterned paper to the front of an A2 card base.

Next, I stamped the bear, then stamped the squirrel on top of the hand of the bear as if they are talking to each other. I watercolored the bottom of the panel to create the ground to sit on for the bear. To colors these cute images I used watercolor paints from Winsor & Newton. I really wanted to give these images a very soft feel to them. To achieve the lightness of the watercolor, I simply diluted the paint with lots of water on my palette and colored from there. For me, the key is to have my brush slightly damp when I pick up the color. Otherwise the water in the brush will mix with the watery paint on the palette and become too wet and hard to control. If the brush is too wet, I wiped the tip of the brush on a piece of paper towel to remove excess water and then picked up the paint from the watercolor palette.

I let the bear, squirrel, and ground dry before painting the background to create a soft colored sky. Once that was dry, I added the butterflies and their trails.

Finally, I stamped the sentiment from the set - "Always & Forever best of friends".

For my second project, I wanted both of the bears arms to be down. This was easy to do by masking the bear's arm with a little wash tape before inking and stamping.

Below are the supplies I used to create this card. I fell deeply in love with watercolor and could not stop :). For the deep blue background effect on the panel, I used Prussian Blue by Winsor & Newton. The white shimmer splatters (twinkling stars) on the card were created using the new PURE COLOR Spray Mist in Shimmer. It's really so gorgeous in person.

The image below shows how I masked the arm of the bear on the stamp using wash tape. This is necessary if you are using a stamp pad, just remember to remove the washi before stamping. If you are using a marker to apply ink, you may not need to do any masking, just avoid inking up that arm. After stamping, the bear with no arm should resemble the image below.

To draw the arm of the bear back in, in the down position, I simply used the writing tip of the Vintage Photo distress marker to draw in the new arm.

Next, I sketched the moon with a pencil and watercolored it in. Once it was dry, I erased any stray pencil marks. Then I stamped the shooting star image from the Lucky Stars stamp set. After that, I painted the entire background in blue, let it dry, and then splattered some PURE COLOR Spray Mist in Shimmer.

To finish off the card, I added the sentiment - from the Dream Believer stamp set - heat embossing it in white.

I hope you guys enjoyed!

Design Team Inspiration

Be sure to stop by and see what Kara has for you today as well!

• Kara Vrabel

Giveaway Alert

Would you like to win a $25 store credit to wplus9.com? Just leave a comment below by 10:00 a.m. EST on 06/03/15 to enter and we will select one random winner from all comments. Winner will be posted on our Release Winners page by noon on 06/03/15.

Thank you so much for stopping by.