Crafty Happy : The Everything ABC's Blog Hop

Welcome to the Everything ABC's Blog Hop!

For this hop we will be featuring the letter H. This may be the name

of a paper, a stamp set or an embellishment. Whatever the crafter has

chosen as their H element will be featured in their post.

If you came from Stephanie Feist of The Quilted Scrapper then you're on the right track!

For the letter "H" I've chosen both the words "Happy" and "Hello". First, I'm Crafty Happy. As I was happily working on a card, I kept finding so many stamp sets with the word "Hello", so that actually became the first card that I completed. I used the "H" colors; Hollyhock (Z2128), Honey (Z2162) and the retired color Heavenly Blue (Z2126). I was surprised to discover those colors actually worked well with the Hopscotch paper: another "H"

Hello Stamps

Have a Happy Day Everyday D1616

Rain or shine D1634

This Moment S1501

Finding t he Words D1646

Just to Say...D1629

Lollydoodle workshop D1585

Hopscotch workshop - D1638

Just Sayin' - S1505

. This was my first atttempt using the Bokeh technique. It's a bubble/blurred effect used in photography and recently I've seen in popping up in cards and layouts. It looks a bit like our Brushed paper.

I first saw a card by Marie Fox on Face Book on the CTMH Artwork group site.

Here are photos of Maries' art showing the technique and her Happy Mother's Day card.

Mary Ellen has a great tutorial on her blog - Create with M.E. I like her technique, though you need water color paper and I'm at a retreat without water color paper. I did use her suggestion to make different size circle templates and sponge white ink over the colors. I also used the dauber to cover the paper with a rainbow of the following colors; Honey, Heavenly Blue, Hollyhock. I was hoping for more purple and green, but didn't get much. Then I used the template and White Daisy to color in the light circles. I'm afraid I wasn't patient enough to let the White Daisy pigment ink dry before stamping it.

Wendy Cranford also has a tutorial on her blog post which I found to be informative and helpful.

Check it out here "Three Ways To Bokeh".

Third tutorial - also watercolor by Stamp Away with Me - Wplus9 Design Studio.

August 2014 Release Week - Bokeh Made Easy

Fourth tutorial - Paula at Stampinantics

This technique is a lot of fun and I finished my "Happy" card. Though wishing I had a better camera. I actually had too much happiness and couldn't use all the stamps I had planned, even though I made a 5 X 7 Step Ladder Card

Open View