Sonoran Starfish Designs

Hello crafty friends! Thanks for stopping by my blog. It's Wednesday, which is hop day for the Brutus Monroe Inspiration Team. This was an "anything goes" week, so we were free to do whatever we wanted! My project, to be honest, started out as a total hot mess! I used the branches from this month's inspiration box titled "Feathered Friends". The stamp set is really cute! It actually has a bird and birdcage theme, but I wanted to keep it simple and make a card with the branches.  So I started by stamping the branches around the edge of an aqua pigment paper panel (say that five times fast!) with Raven detail ink. I have been watercoloring a lot lately, but I typically heat emboss the image, which will contain the paint a lot, so this was where I went a little bit wrong. I mean, there's nothing WRONG with painted a stamped image, but since I'm used to the heat embossed images, the first leaves I painted flowed right outside the lines because I...

Hello crafty friends! Thanks for stopping by my blog! Today is another Wednesday Brutus Monroe blog hop, and our assignment was to use this gorgeous picture as color inspiration for a project! My project today was one of those cards that did NOT turn out how I originally intended! Over the course of a couple days it morphed into a tall, odd-dimension creation. I started out by using the stencil of the month on an Alabaster cardstock panel, and blending Sunflower and Lime glitter glazes in an ombre. Then I decided I wanted the pink and orange tones instead, so I made another separate panel with Raspberry, Pumpkin, Tangerine and Sunflower. I couldn't decide which one I wanted to use, and ended up attaching them so that the color blending went all the way from pink to green! I trimmed down the panels a little bit and attached them together where the yellow areas connected. To cover the line where they connect, I glued a diagonal strip of Alabaster cardstock. I heat embossed t...

Hello crafty friends! It's Wednesday, which means another Brutus Monroe Inspiration Team blog hop! This week, our assignment was to re-create a card that another design team member has made. I absolutely loved the dreamy feel of Marie's card pictured here with my two re-creations. Marie used blue tones, and I used metallic blue fading into green for one, and purple fading into pink for the other. Marie's original inspiration was this video from the amazing and talented Kristina Werner, who called it the "dip-dye technique" in this video found here: Dip Dye Video Here's Marie's card (if you don't already follow her on social media, be sure to check out her page because she is insanely talented!) I taped my torn papers down onto some hardboard with purple tape and followed the instructions in Kristina Werner's video. To make the heart, I put double sided adhesive on some cardstock scraps, and foiled the cardstock before running it ...

Hi crafty friends! Thanks for joining me today. It's Wednesday, which means blog hop day for the Brutus Monroe Inspiration Team. This week we're sharing projects with some subscription products for May. I'm using the stencil of the month which is absolutely gorgeous!  I tinted some fallen snow with Green and Blue neon aqua pigments, and mixed some together to create a turquoise transitional shade. They still react with blacklight, but they are somewhat toned down when they are mixed with the glaze. I mixed some Blue and Green neon aqua pigments together to make the turquoise shade and painted a scrap piece of aqua pigment paper. I heat embossed the sentiment in white, and die cut it with one of the hexagon nesting dies. I cut the next size up hexagon out of Alabaster cardstock and layered them together, slightly turned for more interest. I popped the whole thing up on an Alabaster card base.  The neons are so beautiful even without the blacklight! I am e...

Hello crafty friends! Thanks for stopping by. It's another Wednesday blog hop day for the Brutus Monroe Inspiration Team and this week we're getting ready for Mother's Day! I am the lucky mom to two 4 year old twin girls, and we are hitting that prime Disney princess stage (with a healthy dose of superheroes and cards mixed in!). One of my daughters wears her princess Belle dress nonstop, so when we got this new Happy Rose stamp set, I couldn't help but think of Beauty and the Beast. Brutus Monroe has this awesome bookshelf background stamp and it was perfect for the theme, as Belle is an avid reader!  I started by stamping the background in Raven ink onto some aqua pigment paper. My intention was originally to do some loose watercoloring, but then I decided I wanted the red rose to stand out against the black and white, so I left it alone. I took a piece of vellum, and used a small bowl to draw pencil lines around the top to round it off, so that it would lo...