Special Guest - Maria Willis

Hello, Whimsy friends!  Today we welcome the talented Maria Willis back to the blog!

Hi everybody! It's Maria and I'm thrilled to be back as a guest designer for Whimsy Stamps today. This card was so much fun to make! I went a little bit mixed media style for this one and I always have a good time when I'm making a big old mess. I combined the BAM! You're Old stamp set with the Comic Half-Tone stencil to make this card. This stamp and stencil combo yields such a cool comic book vibe that I really love.

I started out by spraying my background (white Hammermill cardstock) with my Dina Wakley gloss sprays in Lemon and Turquoise. These sprays dry quickly and leave you with a shiny finish so I like to make sure I use permanent ink/products when working on top of them. I ink-blended around the edges of my panel using Nuvo Siren Blue hybrid ink and a blending brush. Then I used my Nuvo Black Shadow hybrid ink to ink-blend through the Comic Half-Tone stencil. I applied the ink more heavily around the edges of the card so that the inside would appear brighter and allow my images to pop.

I stamped the skyline stamp from the BAM! You're Old stamp set at the bottom of my card panel. My black ink was beading up a little bit on the glossy finish and I wasn't getting the dramatic contrast that I had hoped for. I decided to use the stamped image as a guide and painted right over the top of it using black acrylic paint. That left me with a pitch black skyline. I added the lights and other detail back in with a white Posca pen. I also added little asterisks to the background with a white gel pen.

I stamped my images from the BAM! You're Old stamp set in copic friendly ink and colored them in with my Copic markers (I'll add the colors at the bottom of my post). I grabbed a red Copic marker that I had used to color my super hero and colored some white cardstock so that I would have a perfect color match for my sentiment strips. I used black pigment ink to stamp my sentiment and then heat embossed it in clear embossing powder. This is a great trick for getting flawless black heat embossing every time because it eliminates the need for black embossing powder.

To finish my card up I added my images and sentiments with foam tape and then adhered the whole thing to a black cardbase... and that was it! 

I hope you've enjoyed learning a little bit about my process today and that you might feel inspired to go have some crafty fun of your own. A huge thanks to Whimsy Stamps for having me back as a guest again! That's it for today folks. As promised, I will list the Copic colors that I've used below and I will also add links to all of the products that I've used today in case you're interested in checking any of those out.

Have an amazing day everybody!

Maria

COPIC COLORS:

Reds: R21, R24, R27, R29, R39

Blues: B00, B04, B05, B18 (I would've loved to use B02 but can't find mine)

Yellows: Y06, Y08, Y38

Thanks, Maria, for that awesome inspiration!!  

To see more of Maria's work, be sure to visit her blog and check her out on Instagram.