March Leading Lady Maria Fischer | Take One

Today we are excited to introduce our March Leading Lady, Maria Fischer.   Maria caught our attention early on by participating in our challenges.  In fact she was one of the winners of our 1st Birthday Bash Guest Designer Contest and obviously she was our guest designer for our April/May 2015 Release where she dazzled us.  Maria does beautiful work that seems to burst with joyous color and she is such a joy!  

Over the next few Saturdays in Maria will be leading us on a journey of her own design and imagining.  Make sure to visit her blog, rieslingmama, to see more from her and for a chance to win a giveaway! 

Give Maria a big round of applause to welcome her as she steps onto the stage for her first performance as our March Leading Lady!    

Hello Winnie & Walter fans! Maria here and I'm so happy to be sharing my creations with you as Leading Lady this month. A little about me: I'm a Michigan gal, but have been living in the Rhine Valley in Germany for 27 years. Came for a job; stayed for a guy! We have two kids, two rabbits and a dog. Besides cardmaking I like gardening and sport classes. I've been making cards and blogging since 2012 and like a button on my blog says, "I love my computer because my friends live in it!"

When Shay said "delve into a topic... whatever makes you giddy" it became clear to me that I'd be delving into trends and techniques. They make me giddy! Hope you like what you see this month. Today it's all about WATERCOLOR.

Watercolor is not a new trend, but judging by the plethora of watercolor mediums on the market, it doesn't appear to be going out of style any time soon. What can you use to watercolor? Well, watercolors for one - the tube or pan kind. Or dye inks. Or water-based markers. Or, or, or.

Card #1

On this card I've used Dylusions spray inks spritzed with water for a smooshing with an acrylic block technique (a la Mayuri!) to create a watercolor background. You cannot beat the vibrancy of Dylusions colors! I stitched that onto a card and added a Flawless Diamond cutaway cut from silver cardstock. I left a few pieces in for some extra brightness to go with my sentiment. It's from Wishing You with Evelin T Designs. I even stamped a few sparkling rays from My Precious.

Card #2 

Notice the background colors and their placement are similar to card #1, just softer (and vertical). That's because after smooshing card #1's background, I spritzed the leftover ink on the acrylic block and smooshed it onto a second piece of watercolor paper. Trimmed it and stamped a few tweeties from the delightful, recently released LS Exclusives: So Tweet with Evelin T Designs as well as a sentiment. I included a snippet of stamped  woodgrain from Scenery: Into the Woods at the bottom too. What do you think - are the birdies  falling from the sky or bouncing on a trampoline?

Card #3

Source: Adrienne Vita

I like to check out Print and Pattern for trends in surface design and there I found this print which inspired my card. I stamped flora and fauna from In Bloom: Addie's Garden, Elsa's Flora and Anna's Flora in gray and then heat embossed My Precious gems. TIP: Stamp with black Versafine and heat emboss with clear powder to avoid stray black embossing powder bits all over your card.

Now I love to play with watercolors, but a watercolor artist I am not. I prefer to pick up a brush to do some messy application of color to outline stamp images. So here, Distress Inks pressed onto an acrylic block as a palette were my watercolor medium. I applied some water and dropped in some ink with a brush. Splattered the leftover ink and even used Wink of Stella on the gems to add some sparkle to this one-layer card.

And meet card #4. Not sure if it came from the 2015 rainbow wedding trend or not, but watercoloring an image "rainbowed" seems popular lately. I've created an ultra-CAS wedding card with a huge portion of fun topping the cake. Again I used Distress Inks to watercolor.

This card was created with masking, stamping, heat embossing and watercoloring. I used Sugar Rush and sentiments from The Big, The Bold Party and Extras. Those typewriter font sentiments are so versatile!

Thanks for joining me today for Take One. Winnie & Walter have kindly given me a $30 gift card to give away on rieslingmama. Visit me and comment on my four Leading Lady posts to be eligible. I'll announce a lucky winner on April 6th. 

In Take Two, we're gonna talk about the ILLUSTRATED trend...

In Bloom: Addie's Garden	In Bloom: Anna's Flora	In Bloom: Elsa's Flora	LS Exclusives: So Tweet with Evelin T Designs	My Precious	Scenery: Into the Woods
Sugar Rush	The Big, the Bold and Extras	The Big, the Bold and Party	Flawless Diamond Cutaways

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