The Lots of Happy kit came out in the Occasions catalog but it’s going to be available in the new 2018 Annual catalog. I fell in love when I saw it at On Stage last November. The striped box, the watercolor pencils including Lemon Lime Twist and 20 cards, some perfect for mailing others for tucking in a gift bag. Simply stunning. The kit even comes with its own polymer stamp set, ink spot, and a perfectly sized acrylic block meaning it’s ready to travel. And that’s just what I did. I took it with me to Tucson this spring.
I made the first set of five cards exactly as designed using the watercolor pencils that were included. The only thing I used outside of the kit was a blender pen. This tool is fantastic for, well, blending obviously, but softening the lines that are created using pencils. A few swipes and it looks like you actually used watercolor paints on the images.
It may be hard to see in the picture, but there are gold foil accents, vellum leaves, and ombre ribbon to play with as well. I was so happy with how they came out – must be how they named the kit, “Lots of Happy”!
As fantastic as the cards were, I wondered how they would do with the Stampin Blends alcohol markers. So, I made another set of cards. Some of these were cased from Pinterest. But I found that the Blends worked just as well as the pencils.
The Thank You card was a happy accident. I thought the piece of Calypso Coral cardstock was a half sheet. It turns out I must have nipped off a strip at some point. I scored at 4 -1/4″ as usual, but one side of my card was a half inch short. Rather than toss it away, I used a piece of the card front, which also provides the first layer on that card and stamped it with the floral image from the stamp set and put it on the edge of the inside of the card. There was still plenty of room for a sentiment and a handwritten greeting. I think it looks pretty unique too.
As I was admiring the watercolor cards and the Blends cards I remembered that Stampin Up has regular markers too. I should do a set with regular markers. I had to wait until I got home to complete this set with Stampin’ Write pens.
Once I got back to Albuquerque, I wondered just how many cards I could make with one set of “ingredients”. I created six notecards and a gift box with a Christmas theme. For the box, I used the Window Box thinlits. To make the card front fit, I cut 1/4″ off each of the six sides. It’s never too early to start creating for Christmas.
I like how the markers came out. It was still possible to get some shading but blending and getting a perfect layer of color was definitely more challenging.
What other ways do we have to color? Why Brusho. We have Brusho powders. I was confident the markers would work, but the Brusho was a little trickier. The paper isn’t watercolor paper so I knew I would have to use a light hand. For this effort, I used a palette and created a pool of color to work with using the Brusho powder and a spritz or two of water from our misters. I used a damp aqua painter as my paintbrush and dabbed on the color where I wanted it. If I wanted a darker color, I dabbed a little bit more.
One of the nice things about Brusho is that you can mix your own colors. I used the Red and Blue to create a fair approximation of Fresh Fig and the new Merry Merlot. I used those two combos to paint the sprigs of flowers that are either lilacs or lavender. One thing I noticed about the Brusho colors, unmixed, is that the Red, Blue, Yellow, and Orange are very similar to our new In Colors of Lovely Lipstick, Blueberry Bushel, Grapefruit Grove, and Pineapple Punch. So, I used DSP in some of those colors to help create these alternates.
There you have it – four ways to color with Stampin Up!