Wacky Wednesday #12 Inchies Challenge and Dirty Dozen H20 Challenge

Good Wednesday morning.  What’s it like in your neck of of the woods?  It has been so dry here in Florida for so long that we were having fires.  Now we have a “tropical wave” that has dumped two full days of heavy rain and is still going strong.  Ugh! 

Candy is hosting our Wacky Wednesday and has challenged us to use Inchies.  You can get all the details and learn how you can win a 40% off coupon from Rubbernecker Stamps at the Rubbernecker Blog.  You can also visit the Red-Hot Mommas blogs to see other examples!

I hadn’t had the opportunity to play with the new Coffee Inchies and thought they would be perfect to use. I couldn’t resist using the new Distressed Set with the big coffee stain image but think I got a little carried away. Actually, that is what the counter looks like at work when everyone is in the break room  getting their mid morning or afternoon cup.

I punched out my image squares and layer with my SU 1” and 1 1/4” punch.  I stamped all the images and sentiment with Chocolate Chip Craft Ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. I dry embossed the brown strip with my dotted embossing folder but it doesn’t show well in the photo. If I had it to do over I would have only put one or two coffee stains on but I didn’t want to waste a second piece of DP to redo.  This project took my out of my “box”  but that is always a good thing.

Stamps:  Rubbernecker Coffee & Tea Inchies, Distressed Set  Paper:  Chocolate Chip, Papertrey DP   Ink:  Chocolate Chip Craft Ink   Accessories:  SU 1” and 1 1/4” Square Punch, Clear Embossing Powder, Cuttlebug Folder

Dirty Dozen/Dirty Dozen Monthly Challenge

Christine (ChristineCreations) is hosting our monthly Dirty Dozen challenge.  This one was especially up my alley since it involved water and watercoloring. See the challenge focus, requirements and restrictions below.

Challenge Focus: Create a project that has something to do with water, it can be in your stamps, paper, or embellishments.

Required Element: Watercoloring! If we're doing a water themed project there needs to be some element of watercoloring on your creation.

Restricted Element: If it's H2O that means the two in the equation restricts you to only two embellishments.

When I first saw the challenge a couple of weeks ago I instantly thought of doing a beach scene for this project.  I absolutely love creating beach scenes and knew it would be a perfect fit for the challenge.  When I actually sat down over the weekend to begin my piece I gave thought to how I may use a water theme in a different way than I have in the past. I remembered Falls Creek that ran on our property where I grew up. My little sister, Jeannie and I used to go down there and play. I decided it would be fun to try my hand at a creek so my planned project theme changed.  I love creating rustic scenes as much as beach scenes and created the Kittie Kits Farm set especially for that reason.

I started by brushing water on watercolor paper with a large flat brush.  This prepares the paper to accept ink or paint easily.  I brushed dark blue on the sky area and then followed by deep yellow. You always need to use much darker ink or paint colors when watercoloring as they dry much lighter. I painted in a crooked path of water with dark blue and then brushed on dark green for the ground area. I tried to display the barn to be back in the distance behind a hill so I masked off the grassy area and stamped the image and allowing some of it to be hidden. I sort of accomplished my goal but not totally to my satisfaction. It really only looks like you can’t open the barn door on one side as it is up against the hill. Anyway, the barn image was stamped directly over the light blue sky area and the darker barn paint easily colored over the blue. I also think my creek looks a little like it is falling off the side of the scene instead of running across the field.  Oh well!!  I think I need some lessons in perspective.  I used two sizes of evergreen tree images to create the line of trees.  I used less and less of the smallest tree as I went back along the creek bed to show some distance in the scene.  I really like how that turned out. I filled in the grassy area with a small grass sprigs image from my Outdoor Master.

I sat looking at this project trying to figure out how to finish and embellish it. I decided on distressing all four sides of the scene and sponging on darker brown on all the borders. I sponged dark brown on a piece of light blue grosgrain and heated it with the gun to age it. I didn’t think it needed any more embellishment than that. This was one of my favorite projects to work on lately even with all my perspective issues.  Maybe because it gave me the opportunity to think of home and family.

Stamps:  Kittie Kits Farm Scene, Outdoor Master , The Moose Is Loose   Paper:  Watercolor, Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip  Ink:  Going Gray, Vintage Photo, Peeled Paint, Faded Jeans, Lemonade  Accessories:  Paper Distressing Tool, Grosgrain, Brushes