September Leading Lady Carson Riutta | Take Four

As September wanes we sadly bid ado to our sensational September Leading Lady Carson Riutta.  The last four weeks with Carson have been bursting with color, vibrancy and excellent design.  Carson's abilities for eye-catching, inspiring and astounding projects along with her clear instructions are exceptional.  I am so grateful for Carson sharing her amazing talents and skills with us this month!

If you missed her smashing debut you must see it...CLICK HERE or her sensationally brilliantly bold second performance CLICK HERE or her triumphant third performance with a trio of terrific cards CLICK HERE!

Lucky for us all we have her final command performance today.  

Today's post is so bittersweet for me.  I'm excited to share my last project  as your Leading Lady for the month, but I'm also a little sad to be saying goodbye to all my new card making friends.  Your comments have been so lovely and I've really enjoyed spending time with you all, here on the blog.  I just hope that if you've enjoyed my posts you'll head over to my Instagram, pineandplum and follow me there so that we can keep in touch over our shared love of papercrafts.

For my last project, I went a little crazy and made quite a few cards and tags.  I started with yet another watercolor technique using my beloved Distress Stains.  I did grab a glass of water this time and spent a good half hour laying down some vibrant and punchy colors onto watercolor card stock.  For each of the papers you see above, I used three colors of stain and simply layered them willy nilly onto the paper until I was happy with the outcome.  When I was finished with them all, I laid them out over my work space and began flicking water on them.  The water pulls up some of the color and you get that ghosting of water droplets, that you can see in the photo above.  I think this final step adds so much interest and depth to the colors.  It really elevates the background from a sloppy watercolor to a very interesting little piece of art.


I then spent some serious time creating those beautiful little mosaic tags using the fabulous Multifaceted and Flawless Cutaways.  These die sets are a perfect example of a product that is so "stand alone" good that you can create for hours simply doing what is was intended for.  The mosaic shapes are so fun and have so much possibility that you don't have to think outside the box with these.  They are well designed and simply stunning.

The warm watercolor background looked so good with the gold paper that I decided to leave some of the gold shapes intact when creating my mosaic.  I love the way the different textures play off of one another, how the soft glow of the watercolor and the sharp glitter of the paper contrast so nicely.

I'm not gonna lie here, I did have to run to the craft store to pick up some suitable ribbon to finish this project off, but I'm so glad I did, because now I own that gorgeous gold ribbon and can make the most stunning little gifts with these golden tags!

There was one watercolor background that I ended up having a bit of a crush on and couldn't bring myself to die-cut.  I decided to create a card with it instead, using a simple glitter sentiment from The Big, The Bold and the Fun Cutaways along with some small embellishments.

I repeated the whole process with the cool color backgrounds I had created, but this time I used different colored glitter papers to frame the tags and kept the mosaic pieces entirely cut from the watercolor backgrounds.

I was so happy about that blue streak through this diamond, and the way the ghosted water droplets look like bokeh, that I almost squealed when this one came together.  I absolutely love a relatively easy technique that turns out quite stunning, it can make us all feel like artists!

As a finishing touch for the tags I glued a few matching sequins down to give them a bit more sparkle and then tied them with matching satin ribbons.  One ribbon is nice, but in my mind, two or more is always better!

And finally I turned my last mosaic diamond into another card.  This time I played around with some Glossy Accents to give the diamond some literal shine and popped it off the card front from some extra dramatic flair.

Thank you so much for all your time and attention this past month.  I've had such a wonderful time playing with the Winnie & Walter products and reading all your lovely comments.  Don't forget to head over to my blog and leave a comment‎ to enter our end of the month drawing for a $30 Winnie & Walter gift card.



Take care and happy crafting friends!

Carson

My Precious

The Big, the Bold and Fun

Flawless Diamond Cutaways

The Big, the Bold and Fun Cutaways

True Multifaceted Circle Cutaways

True Multifaceted Heart Cutaways

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