Winnie & Walter Leading Lady: Take One

Hello friends! Welcome to my first Leading Lady guest post for Winnie and Walter!

Every Saturday during the month of August, I will be sharing inspiration using Winnie and Walter stamps and dies. I’m so honored Shay from Winnie and Walter had asked me earlier this year to be one of their Leading Ladies… it was hard to wait for August to finally get here! Haha! But now it has arrived and I can finally share my cards I’ve created using Winnie and Walter’s fun products.

For those of you who are new to my work, let me tell you a short-and-sweet story about me! I’m a 20-something, graphic designer, illustrator and creative artist; in other words, crafting is my full-time job! It wasn’t always that way though; I had worked other jobs in both the sales and non-profit fields prior to becoming a full time artist. But I’m so thankful God gave me the opportunity to do what I love in being an artist and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else! I’ve lived by the ocean pretty much my entire life and currently I’m a seaside Maine-r with a Mid-Atlantic accent! If you want to know more about me, you can visit my blog’s About Me page, here.

So are you ready to jump into today’s card??? Today I am focusing on creating your own, custom galaxy background; I’ll be sharing some tips and tricks on how to best achieve an impacting galaxy, so keep on reading!

This background was created with just a few simple supplies: watercolors (in this case, the Prima Watercolor Confections), watercolor paper, Winnie and Walter’s Wishing You stamp set, white embossing powder and embossing ink. Very simple, right??

I love creating galaxy backgrounds because you can get really creative and use a variety of colors… pretty much every color of the rainbow looks good in a galaxy! The trick to creating a stunning, starry night sky is LAYERS. Layers of color is the biggest key to getting the results you are looking for in your galaxies.

For this card, I wanted to use yellows, pinks, blues and blacks; the lightest colors were the ones I put down first (in this case the yellow and light blue). The colors were applied in a “dabbing” fashion; I did not use strokes.

I dried the layer and then moved onto my next colors. Drying in between layers is important because it will prevent your layers from becoming muddy; if you apply wet paint onto an already painted area that is still wet, the colors will blend. If you have too many contrasting colors blending together, you’ll end up with brown “mud”… definitely not the look we are going for!

My second layer of colors were pink and dark blue. I again dried the paper after applying the color down and then added my final layer; black. Black was an important color for me when creating this galaxy. I don’t always use black in my galaxies, but I felt that this one needed the stark contrast of the black to ground the bright colors and keep them from being too distracting. I was very careful with how much black I applied down, as this can overpower your background very quickly. Go slow and evaluate the look and feel of the background every so often to make sure you are not adding too much… remember, less is usually more! :)

After my background was finished (and looking very much like a hot mess!), I used the Wishing You stamp set to stamp and heat emboss some white stars into the sky; this instantly makes the explosion of color look like a galaxy/night sky.

I took it a couple steps further and added some white gold splatters using the Starry Colors watercolor set, and some white dots using a Signo gel pen. I love the look of small stars to add depth to the background, as I feel this lends towards a more realistic galaxy.

I turned this background into a card by popping it onto a black card base. I also added a gold glitter and vellum fractal circle (using the Winnie and Walter True Multifaceted Circle Cutaways), which is serving as my moon, and a sentiment which is also from the Wishing You stamp set.

I hope this has inspired you to try creating some gorgeous galaxy backgrounds of your own using Winnie and Walter stamps and dies! If you do not have the Wishing You set, a few other stamps that would also make for great galaxies are the Let It Snow, Sparkle, True and Big Bang Confetti sets.

 

GIVEAWAY!

Before you go, I want to tell you that Shay was SUPER generous in allowing me to giveaway a $30 gift certificate to one of you, which can be used in the Winnie and Walter store! How cool is that?? BIG thank you to Shay for being so sweet!

To qualify for the giveaway, make sure you leave a comment on any of my Winnie and Walter blog posts (commenting on each Saturday post this month will count as extra chances to win the giveaway). After the last Leading Lady post at the end of the month, I’ll draw a random winner from all the collective post comments.

 

MORE INSPIRATION

If you liked this post, be sure to check out some of my other galaxy posts and videos! Click on the photos to be taken to the corresponding blog posts.

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PRODUCTS

If you are interested in any of the products used in this post, I have them all linked below to Simon Says Stamp. Affiliate links used when possible.

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SIMON SAYS STAMP

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