Easter Egg Hunt

Easter Egg Hunt

 

Its April--its finally Spring (though it feels more like summer down here in the swamp) and Easter is just around the corner.  Our family reunion with its annual Easter Egg hunt is coming up next weekend, so in honor--here is my first ever blog post creation:

 

 

 And here is how I did it.  I started with some Distress inks in Peacock Feathers, Mustard Seed and Picked Raspberry for a nice bright Eastery background. 

 

 

 I didn't take a lot of effort at this.  I just squashed some of each ink down on my mat, spritzed them with water and then smeared some watercolor paper through it.  Then I touched up the edges with a little more ink here and there, and shot it with my heat gun.

 

I liked the result, but felt like it needed a little more "oomph" so I spritzed it in a couple of places with some Dylusions spray inks in Funky Fuchsia and Vibrant Turquoise.  Yay!  now my background is finished.

Next up is a little stamping.  I cleaned up my work surface and then mashed down some more of each of my three Distress inks.  Then used a paint brush and a little water to watercolor three stamped images of the Tim Holtz Egg from the Easter Blueprint Collection.  I tried using Distress Markers first, but the matching three colors aren't quite as vibrant as the ink pads, and I like the bright colors better for this Easter egg.  I didn't need to completely color all three of these, but I was playing with colors and got a little carried away. 

 

 

Next, I fussy cut my egg parts and inked up the edges of each in some Peacock Feathers.

I wanted my egg to have a rounded dimension a little more like a real egg, so I used mounting foam on the middle back of each piece to pop them up, and then used glue around the sides and edges to make them puffy and round.

I then took the whole egg and overlaid it onto the blueprint image stamped onto my background.  I had to hold it down with my fingers for a bit until it stuck, but I like the effect.

 

Next up was to add a little sparkle to the egg with my new Wink of Stella brush in Clear.  Super fun little tool for adding just a little bit of sparkle without having to mist the whole paper with a Smooch spray or have to lose color with an opaque glitter glue.

 

I trimmed down the whole background, rounded the corners, used the distresser gizmo to roughen up all the edges, and then used the foam tool to ink up all the edges with some more Peacock Feathers.

 

I decided it needed some grass, so I grabbed my little Die-Namics "Fresh Cut Grass" die (love this little die!!) and used both sides of the cut.  I sanded them down a bit, then inked up the edges with the foam tool and some Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

 

 Now for the greeting.  I have NO "Happy Easter" anything in my stamp stash.  I can't believe it.  I hunted through all of it.  I'm going to have to hit up the Michael's $1 bin after Easter and see if I can find a cheap block.  But for now I had to just rig up something.  I used the "happy" die from Simon Says Stamp! and some Bermuda Bay cardstock from Stampin' Up--which nicely matches the Peacock Feather ink color...at least close enough.

 

Then I pulled out this Martha Stewart set I got at a garage sale and spelled out Easter.  I stamped this on a little piece of scrap white cardstock using some Bermuda Bay Stampin' Up ink and then inked around the edges with my foam inker and rounded up the paper edges.

 

How do you like my new foam inker?  I don't have enough foam pads or tools to dedicate to my Stampin' up colors, so I came up with this little solution.  I found these little plastic hooks at Walmart--6 for 98 cents.  I put a piece of sticky Velcro on the back and then cut a Ranger foam piece in half.  Voila!  I don't have to keep washing out Sponge Daubers any more, and I was never satisfied with the results I would get from dollar store cleaning sponges.  The Ranger foam really does work the best for edge inking. 

 

Almost done!!  I cut up an inside piece of white cardstock (5"x3.75") and stamped this little Great Impressions Easter Egg stamp on the bottom corner.  I painted up the egg with my brush and Distress Inks (why didn't I do this before I cleaned up my mat the first time??)  and then inked the grass with some markers and used a Judith grass stamp to add some extra grass.

 

Finally!! Glue everything down, rumple the grass.  I cut some polka dot paper from my stash into a 2"x 5.5" piece (from We R Memory Keepers:  72&Sunny Dots)  and attached everything down to the card base made from Stampin' Up Crumb Cake.

 

 

Hope you like it, thanks for reading and

Happy Egg Hunting!

Can you see the dimension?

 

Inside peek...