CAS-ual Fridays and Imagine Crafts Blog Hop!

Hello there, so glad you stopped by today!  CAS-ual Fridays and Imagine Crafts are having a blog hop!  The Girl Fridays were given the opportunity to work with some amazing Imagine Crafts products, and I'm excited to show you the projects I created.  Let's get started, shall we?!

This first card uses VersaColor pigment inks, VersaFine ink, and Sponge Daubers.  I own mostly all dye inks, but there are SO many cool techniques that you can do with pigment inks that I knew I wanted to start to build a collection of them.  I love that the Imagine Crafts VersaColor pigment ink pads come in both regular size and mini, I'm going to collect the mini's so I can get all the colors!

Along with the Imagine Crafts products I used two CAS-ual Fridays stamp sets on this card,  Pretty Posies and Wonderful Words.  To make my card I started by stamping the flowers and leaves using VersaFine Black Onyx ink.  This ink stays wet for just a bit so if you work quickly you can add clear embossing powder on top of it and emboss, and that's what I did here.  I wanted to make sure I had no smudging whatsoever when I blended the pigment ink and embossing will ensure that.  Next I used the VersaColor pigment inks and Sponge Daubers to add color to my flowers and leaves, dabbing and blending to create the look I wanted.  For the large flower in the center I used Petal Pink, Orchid, and Boysenberry, for the medium flowers I used Canary and Orange, for the small flowers I used Sky Blue, and for the leaves I used Fresh Green and Green.  I love how you can easily blend these inks to add several colors to your stamped images.  Next I cut out the flowers and leaves using Posies Fri-Dies.  Because pigment inks stay wet for awhile the next thing I did was add clear embossing powder on top of the flowers and leaves and embossed them.  This adds a delicious SHINE to these flowers that I just love!!  I tried to capture that shine in my close up shots, I hope you can see it.

I love shine and bling on my cards, and often use Glossy Accents to coat my projects, but I wouldn't want to do that with all of these flowers and leaves, so this technique is a perfect way to add some shine to your cards and really make them stand out!   I arranged the flowers and leaves on the card, stamped the sentiment and added some clear sequins to finish it.

Another thing that pigment inks are fabulous for is stamping on Kraft cardstock!

For this card I used Bold Wishes and Sassy Smiles stamp sets.  The pigment ink colors I used here are Orange, Fresh Green, and Orchid.  I will tell you that the very lightest pigment ink colors don't show up quite as vividly on Kraft as the brighter, medium shades, like the ones I used here, although you can still see them.  But I love how these colors look on the Kraft paper, don't you?!

I embossed the tiniest images using white embossing powder to make them stand out a bit more, and I did some selective stamping to make the "my" "friend" labels (the actual stamp says "you're my best friend").   As you probably know by now I love mixing and matching sentiments to say exactly what I want to say :)

This is a hop, so of course there are prizes involved!  Be sure to comment on each stop along the way in order to be eligible to win one of the two FABULOUS prizes being offered!!

The next stop on the hop is the talented RONI JOHNSON!