Watercoloring with Distress Inks

Hi, everyone!

Today I'll share with you a card I made using disress inks.  I bought some distress inks two years ago, so I could ink my scrapbook/mini-album pages.  I bought the full pads (the mini's were not available at the time), but did not get to complete the "collection."

I saw some YouTube videos of other papercrafters using the distress inks to watercolor, and I was itching to try it out, so I broke out my distress inks and started watercoloring:

I stamped the image in watercolor paper, die cut it, and then embossed using Versamark and black embossing powder.

Then I got carried away, and decided to try my hand at blending with the blending tool, too:

I used the blending tool for the sky.  First, I made mask for the buildings in the background, then blended the blue (Salty Ocean) around them.  Then, I stamped the buildings (sorry, as you can see, they were not spot-on) in black ink, and colored in the windows with a marker.

I'm entering this card to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge.  They are highlighting Tim Holtz's products this week, and the challenge is to make a masculine card.  I hope my card fits the bill!

I don't think I did an awesome job with watercoloring or blending, but I think it was not too bad -- especially since this is my first time to try out both techniques.  I definitely need to work on them, but I love how well the inks flowed into the watercolor paper.  I will definitely be purchasing more of this distress inks in the future.

I used these products for this card:

White cardstock (Georgia-Pacific)

Black cardstock (Recollections)

Watercolor paper (Strathmore)

Stamp set (Paper Smooches Super)

Dies (Paper Smooches Super 1)

Blending tool (Ranger)

Distress inks (Tim Holtz:  Salty Ocean, Black Soot, Barn Door, Faded Jeans, Wild Honey)

Watermark ink (Versamark)

Black embossing powder (Stampin' Up!)

Foam tape

Big Shot

Magnetic platform

Thanks for looking, and have a great day!

Organization: Planner Pages

As promised, I'm sharing with you today what's inside my planners.  I use the Junior size Arc planner that I got from Staples.

My Work Planner
I keep my work planner fairly simple, because I need to be able to find things in it quickly.  I also carry it with me always.

On the left, I have the 2015 calendar.  On the right, I have my birthday and anniversary list.

Then I have the monthly calendar (or the month-at-a glance).  If you notice, the months are left blank, because these were from the Unplan pages that I was talking about in my last post.  I had previously printed out a several of these pages, so I am going to use them up before I switch to the monthly pages from the 2015 bundle.

I use the monthly calendar to jot down meetings, appointments, projects and deadlines, as well as days off (or days that I've called in sick).  I never used to track my vacation and sick days (I've always just trusted on the fact that our unused vacation days roll over to the next year, but our work decided to stop the "roll over" recently -- boo!).  

For specifics on scheduled meetings/appointments/projects and deadlines, as well as for daily goal-setting (to-do lists), I use the week on two pages spread:

I only keep around three months of weekly pages at a time, so as not to overfill my planner.

For any notes that I have to write, and for my brain-dump, I use these pages that came with the planner when I bought it:

Lastly, I keep my work contacts on these pages:

So, there you have it -- my work planner.  Let's take a look at my personal planner now.

My Personal Planner

I use my personal planner mostly track finances, and to write out lists.

My first page is a 2015 calendar:

I use these monthly pages to write down bill payments (amount and due dates).  Once I've paid off a bill, I check it off with a pen (it gives me satisfaction to do that ;p).  I also write down reminders for me to put some money to my savings account every month.  I know it's easy to set up recurring electronic transfers, but I think it's more fun for me to actually transfer the money (makes me more excited to save).  As weird as that may sound, it does work for me.

There are mortage payment and car payment printables as well, and I use that for those purposes, but I had forgotten to take a photo.  For the other debts that I had to pay down (financing from the furniture store, student loan, etc), I use this page:

Also, shortly after Thanksgiving, I decided to do 52-week savings challenge.  That means that I put aside the equivalent of the week in dollar amount to a savings account.  For example, for Week 1, I put $1, for Week 2, $2, for week 3, $3, and so on (so the savings add up).  I reversed it, though, and started putting $52 on the first week, then $51 on the second week, and so on.  That is to take advantage of this "motivation" that I'm still feeling early in the challenge.  However I do it, I still end up with $1,378 (or somewhere in the ballpark of it) by the week of Thanksgiving in 2015.  And what will I do with the money?  Black Friday shopping for crafty stuff, of course!

But I digress (sort of).  I use this to stay on track with the 52-week (reverse) challenge:

Okay, on to fun stuff: I list down books that I want to read on this page:

Then, to reward myself on days when the going gets tough, I buy one or two books for my Kindle reader (for iPhone and iPad) from Amazon.

And then I list the books that I've read on this page.  I rate the books by shading the hearts.

Lastly, I use this page for my craft wish list:

There is also a page for "Things I Need" but I chose not to use it, because, if you can't already tell, I lose all objectivity when it comes to craft-related purchases.  Meaning, I always feel that I need everything that I want to purchase.

If you notice, I don't have a specific cleaning list, grocery list, and meal planning pages, although those are also included in the bundles that I purchased.  It's because I haven't decided on whether I'll be using them, or using a different planning system altogether (more about it in a future post).

Again, I bought these pages here.

So there you have it -- my work and personal planners.

Thanks for looking, and have a great day!

Organization: Sharing My Planner

When I was a student, I carried a planner with me everywhere.  It was nothing fancy -- just a monthly calendar, and a weekly calendar -- so I can keep track of my homework, projects due, and upcoming exams.

When I graduated from school, I kissed my planner goodbye.  It was taking too much real estate in my purse.  Besides, I had a smart phone, and I could keep track of everything there.  For the most part, though, I only kept meetings and appointments in my phone.  I kept track of my bills and payments, etc. in my memory.

Fast forward several years later, and here I am,   Relying on my mental capacity worked for me for a little bit, and then I had r, and all of a sudden, I was trying to remember my personal and work schedules, and R's and r's schedules as well.  I needed a more systematic approach to keeping track of everything, especially as I took on more responsibilities at work, too.

I searched high and low for a planning system that I could work with, and finally chose these Arc planners (both in Junior size) from Staples:

My work planner

My personal planner

I chose the discbound system mainly because of its flexibility.  I can switch out the discs to accommodate more (or less) pages in my "planner," as my needs change.  My work planner has the 1.25-inch discs, and my personal planner has the 2-inch discs:

I also chose to print my own planner inserts/pages, instead of buying the ready-made ones at the store.  I bought my planner inserts here.  I purchased both the Unplan pages, and the 2015 bundle.  The Unplan pages had no dates in them, so I could definitely just keep printing more forever (well, in theory, I could).  The 2015 bundle were more structured, had pre-printed pages, and had more "categories."  Both sets of pages complemented each other nicely, although the monthly and weekly pages (if I remembered correctly) were pretty similar.  It was well worth it, though.  I loved the pretty colors, it made me more excited to actually use my planner.

I'll share more about what's inside these planners in a future post.

Thanks for looking, and have a great day!