Today I am excited to introduce our November Leading Lady, Jessica Frost-Ballas. Jessica is a powerhouse of inspiration and talent and her contributions to our challenges to celebrate our Share the Love Week featuring Essentials by Ellen really blew me away!
Over the next few Saturdays in November Jessica will be leading us on a journey of her own design and imagining. Make sure to visit her blog, All the Sparkle, to see more from her and for a chance to win a giveaway!
Give Jessica a big round of applause to welcome her as she steps onto the stage for her first performance as our November Leading Lady!
Good morning! I am so excited to be the November Leading Lady for Winnie & Walter and I am looking forward to sharing creations with you every Saturday this month!
For those who may not know me, my name is Jessica and I blog over at All the Sparkle! I live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with my incredibly supportive husband, two senior shelties, a crazy tortoiseshell cat, and a senior dutch bunny. I am a professional musician by day and a papercrafter by night (or really early morning)! I enjoy creating cards for my friends and family and I can often be found coloring a couple images or embossing a sentiment in-between lessons and gigs! I love experimenting with new techniques and mediums and I usually can’t resist adding a little extra sparkle to all of my cards and projects! I'm really excited to share my projects with you this month and many many thanks to Shay for the invitation!!
For my first post I wanted to focus on the many gemstone and jewel die and stamp sets that Winnie and Walter carries and use a bright jewel-toned palette. Here's what I came up with!
For my first card I stamped several heart shaped gemstones from My Precious onto watercolor paper with versafine and then heat-embossed them with clear embossing powder. Next I wet each heart and loosely watercolored them with Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors. I set them aside to dry while I worked on the rest of the card. Next I watercolored another piece of paper using the same palette. I let it dry and then die-cut it using the Flawless Heart Cutaway. I die-cut the gem outline with black cardstock and adhered it over the watercolored heart. Then I pressed a versamark pad over the heart and heat-embossed it with ultra high embossing powder to create a shiny, raised gem.
Once my background panel was dry I splattered black paint across the panel and then adhered my larger heart over the background. I stamped the sentiment from True onto black cardstock and heat-embossed it with white embossing powder. I adhered it to my background panel with foam mounting panel and added a sprinkling of black and clear sequins!
For my next card I wanted to continue with my loose watercoloring! I stamped the diamonds and sentiment from My Precious onto watercolor paper and heat-embossed them with metallic silver sparkle embossing powder. I watercolored them with shades of blue to turn my diamonds into sapphires! :) Once it was dry I splattered blue and silver paint across my panel and added a sprinkling of silver and clear sequins. Finally I trimmed my panel down and added strips of silver glitter paper to the top and bottom of the card.
Last but not least I wanted to go all out with gems and watercolors! ;)
I stamped the gems from My Precious across a piece of watercolor paper with versamark and heat-embossed them with white embossing powder. I didn't worry too much about lining up my gems exactly....I think the casual arrangement works better with loose watercoloring! I watercolored the entire panel with my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors and allowed it to dry.
Next I stamped the sentiment from Wishing You with Evelin T Designs onto black cardstock and heat-embossed it with white embossing powder. I added a layer of spectrum noir clear sparkle to the black cardstock so it would really shimmer. Then I stamped the beginning of the sentiment onto vellum and heat-embossed it with silver embossing powder. I trimmed it down and adhered them over a bundle of silver metallic thread. Finally I finished the card with silver and clear sequins and then added spectrum noir clear sparkle to some of my diamond facets!
I hope my trio of cards will inspire you to add some sparkle and shimmer to your projects!
And I'm super excited to share that Shay has generously given me a $30 gift certificate to Winnie and Walter to gift to one lucky commenter! Leave a comment on any of my Leading Lady posts for a chance to win. Leaving a comment on multiple posts will give you additional chances to win so be sure to check back each Saturday!
Thanks so much for visiting and have a wonderful weekend!
-Jess
beautiful card...love the color combo
ReplyDeleteI love your cards so I'm super excited to see you guesting over here! And all three of these beauties are fabulous. You always get the combination of shapes and colours spot on in your creations and these are great examples. That final card has stolen my heart with its yummy background <3 Thanks for the inspiration!
ReplyDeleteAwesome cards !
ReplyDeleteGorgeous cards, as always! Especially love the last one. The white heat-embossed gemstone pattern looks amazing with the watercolouring!
ReplyDeleteJessica, I look at your cards and run to my craft room and use the same stamps and distress inks and Gambi Tansai but my cards never dazzle like yours do. Your colors are so vivid and perfectly blended. I especially love the last card.
ReplyDeleteAll fabulous cards! Jessica is an awesome choice for leading ladd! Her cards are always inspiring me to try out new ideas in my designs. Congratulations Jessica!
ReplyDelete*lady, sorry typing on my phone!
DeleteYour cards are beautiful!
ReplyDeleteGorgeous cards! Love the colors!
ReplyDeleteLove all your cards!! The right amount of pop of color in all of them is simply stunning! Thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteEmail id
Deleteinzzzpiration@gmail.com
hugs
preeti
Fabulous cards! I really like the colors you used to blend for the backgrounds and gems--so pretty.
ReplyDeleteA trio of loveliness, Jess ... what a fabulous debut for your Leading Lady month ... looking forward to more! Anita :)
ReplyDeleteWonderful job! Pinned them all!
ReplyDeleteAll super luxe and gorgeous!!!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful cards Jess!! Makes sense that you blog at All That Sparkle..you've got a lot of beautiful sparkliness & water coloring going on with your cards!!
ReplyDeleteOh Jessica!!! You are such an inspiration - Leading Lady? Yes!!! please! I LOve what you've done with these fabulous products ... must get them back out, for sure! Congratulations on a well-deserved gig!
ReplyDelete=] Michele
Jessica, I'm bedazzled by your gorgeous creativity with the multi-faceted images! The colours, the designs, the sentiment+image pairings: flawless! True love for each one! You're an outstanding leading lady; lucky us to be the audience for your incredible talents!
ReplyDelete~carol
These are Fabulous!!! The colors and water coloring are Amazing!!!
ReplyDeleteYour cards are beautiful. I especially love the watercolor.
ReplyDeleteWelcome Jessica. Love the vibrant colors you selected. Love love Torties, my little girl lived to be 19, Hope to get another someday.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful Jess! Love all those gorgeous colors. Thanks for sharing and inspiring.
ReplyDeleteI love these cards. I want to case them and try them myself. So beautiful
ReplyDeleteLove the gorgeous, rich colors!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful cards, love the vibrant watercolor and the silver embossing!
ReplyDeleteGorgeous cards, each
ReplyDeleteone is spectacularly
colored!
Carla from Utah
Wow! Two of my favorite things....diamonds and jewel tones!!
ReplyDeleteOutstanding cards with Jewels and brilliant colors!!!! Musician and Stamper. Great combo!!!!
ReplyDeleteWow! Awesome cards!!! Congrats to be the November Leading Lady, Jessica!! I love your creations!!!!
ReplyDeleteSo thrilled to see Jessica being featured here!! All of these cards are stunning!!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful cards and colors with these gemstone stamps.
ReplyDeleteLove the flawless card!
ReplyDeleteAll of these are cards are fantastic, but the last one really caught my eye, it super stunning!
ReplyDeleteAmazing... just love the mix of blues and pinks in the first and last cards! Jessica is a very talented artist!
ReplyDeleteWow! These cards are fantastic.
ReplyDeleteAll cards are beautiful, especially the last one with those beautiful watercolouring and colours.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful cards, I love the one with the large gem you heat embossed after watercoloring etc..it looks amazing and really pops off the card. I also love the sentiment on the card with the 3 beautiful blue gems you watercolored.
ReplyDeleteAwesome cards! You can never go wrong with diamonds & yours are stunning!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful cards!! Love al the detail and color! Great ideas!
ReplyDeleteI love, love, love all the bling!
ReplyDeleteThese cards are incredible! The beautiful vibrant watercolors are just stunning! Your creativity is Jay awesome!
ReplyDelete"Just" awesome. Lol
DeleteGreat use of watercolors! The heart card is my favorite. Love the contrast of the black.
ReplyDeleteWow, your cards are so gorgeous - love the bright colors you have used:)
ReplyDeleteWhat a gem of a debut! Lovely!!
ReplyDeleteWow!! The splashes of color on all your cards makes for a beautiful design. I love the dramatic look of your first one, especially!
ReplyDelete