Trendy warm wishes

Hello all! Hope you are staying cool where you are -- guess I got tired of the CRAZY heat wave we are having here in Wisconsin -- because I chose to make a winter card this week!



I've always loved all the High Hopes snow ladies -- & yes I actually decided to give watercoloring another shot! I am so bad at it -- but I cheated this time & used my blender pen to blend my ink instead of that darn water brush. I *loathe* the water brush. I *heart* my blender pen. I had used it before with the SU markers but hadn't tried it to blend inks. It worked great! I used 3 or 4 different Distress Inks, then a bit of Twinkling H2O's for shading. My H2O's never look as good as everyone else's, but I guess I say that about everything, lol.

I had to laugh at all the "trends" I used on my card. First, there's the ever popular cheesecloth that I am seeing on everyone's cards -- love the touch of shabby!! Then, there's the snowflake with Glitter Glass -- made popular by my idol Anna Wight. Did you know Glitter Glass is actually shards of glass? I do now! Oooooo I really shouldn't be allowed to play with shards of glass!!

Finally, there is the crazy crinkled seam binding trend. I had seen rumpled ribbons on quite a few cards --figured everyone is just buying it from Etsy or Ebay or some such place -- I don't get to SCS these days much so I had no idea everyone was MAKING THEIR OWN!! Until I read the unfortunate thread in my Ebay sellers group chat board -- they were all talking about buying this seam binding (they were even kind enough to share the Ebay seller's name, just my luck!) & dying it using Glimmer Mist. Well of course I had to do some research -- found a whole thread about it on SCS!! Turns out there are MANY WAYS to dye this fabulous seam binding. So....sigh.. I purchased a roll (just one? What was I thinking??!) & started dying my own. Ahhhhhh it *is* fun. I'm saving money, right? Now I don't have to buy all those colors, right?





Not sure if this was ever a trend, but I did just find Snow Writer at Michael's & since I love making winter cards I decided I had to give that a try too!! Added some Glamour Dust while it was wet -- turns out makes *groovy* snow :)




The Anna-inspired sparkly snowflake......

I am entering this into the Sundays with Crissy design team call -- & also it's my lucky day because Simon Says Stamp's challenge this week is Anything Goes -- my favorite kind -- so I am entering it there as well.

It's already been a busy week here -- the County Fair begins tomorrow & my boys joined 4H this year, which means they got to make projects that were judged & will be displayed all week at the fair. Both of them did great, I'm proud of all the hard work they did. And guess what -- little did I know *I'm* eligible to enter projects as well! Too late this year, but you better believe I'm thinking about what I want to enter next year!! I'm gonna earn me a blue ribbon or two!

Have a super week! It's only supposed to be 97 tomorrow, the day we will be at the fair all day! Whew!!! The good news is I took off of work Thursday & we will be hitting the beach :)