getting outside the box

I never really thought much about my style of stamping. I just do what feels right to me at the moment. When we went to the stamp show a couple of weeks ago there were alot of clean style cards. You know, cute, simple, white space. They really appealed to me, and we talked about trying to do some cards like them. Heather posted a love bites challenge and since she was with me at the show, I thought I'd try her challenge with this style.

So here is the finished card. The concept was so much easier than the execution of this one. I learned something about my style. I think my cards have the look they do because I am a messy stamper. I can't keep a white piece of paper white to save my life. You can't even imagine the troubles I went through making this one. I could have made a 1/2 dozen cards in my regular messy style in the time it took to make this one.

Then I decided to try out one more thing from that stamp show. I got some of that fun prima paintable paper. It reminds me of those doodle posters I used to color in with markers back in the day. Even thought this was black and white, it wasn't clean. I could mess around with paint. That made it messy. I like messy. Here is the little funny valentine page I made with it.

I love this one even though it's way out of the box from my normal style. I tried Beth's tutorial on watercoloring with tombows to do this. I have been admiring Jennifer's watercoloring with tombows, and was so happy to finally learn how. Oh, I love watercoloring with tombows. You have to try it. I only did one thing different than the tutorial. I used a waterbrush. I like the ease of it. I'm sure it worked on this project because pink and red are so close together, so if the colors blend, who cares. See, I'm a messy stamper.

I did a review of this prima paintable paper that will be on Craft Critique tomorrow.