Beautiful Galaxy

Hi friends. Welcome to another Mojo Monday.  Since it's one of those months with 5 Mondays in it, I've got a square sketch for you this week. It's got lots of layers, but you could drop one or two and still have a beautiful card.

I had this mixed media galaxy background I made a while back sitting on my desk and thought it would be the perfect backdrop for my card. It was made with distress paint, distress oxide inks, a neo watercolor II crayon and white paint.

Next I masked off part of the verse from Butterfly Grace to fit my stitched oval shape and stamped in onyx black.  The butterfly is stamped on watercolor paper in archival black and then colored with watercolor pencils and accented with glitter and die cut with the coordinating Graceful Butterflies Die Set .  For the mat behind the sentiment, I used collage medium to adhere some dictionary paper to watercolor paper before die cutting. Then I tried watercoloring with the same watercolor pencils, but everything beaded up because of the collage medium  Luckily for me, I had just received some transparent watercolor ground, so added a layer of that to my oval, let it dry and it took the watercolor beautifully.  Yay! I added some distressed edges and black mats here and there and did some flicking with watercolor pencils and a wet brush to make the largest white panel.  And I opted for washi over the rectangle layer, rather than under so more of those stripes would show.

There was much debate in my house over whether or not the butterfly should be added. All three of my boys said yes to the butterfly, even though I was leaning to just let the sentiment do the work. After I added it in and a few little stars at the bottom, I think they made the right choice! :)

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you have a fabulous start to your week. For more inspiration with this sketch, hop on over to the Mojo Monday blog for a peek at what the other designers are sharing today.  If you like measurements, the ones I used to draw up the sketch are listed below.

Card Base: 4.25 x 4.25"

Layer 1: 4" x 4"

Layer 2: 2.75" x 2.75" (optional inner mat of 2.5" x 2.5" mat)

Layer 3: 0.5" x 3.75" strip or ribbon/washi

Layer 4: 3.25" x 1" (optional inner mat of 3 x 0.75")

Layer 5: 2.5" x 1.5" oval (or other shape)

And if you're looking to do a little shopping today, Verve has a little Summer Kick-Off sale going with free shipping on US orders over $25.  And with some of our favoritest stamps ever on sale 25% off, and retiring sets at 60% off, it just might be the perfect time to add a little Verve to your collection. {wink}

Enabler's List

Stamps: Butterfly Grace (Verve Stamps)
Paper: watercoor paper, dictionary paper, black
Ink: onyx black (Versafine), archival black (Ranger), Vintage Lover watercolor pencils (Prima), charcoal pencil (dollar store), distress paint, distress oxide inks (Ranger), white paint, gesso, Neo Watercolor II crayon (Caran d'Ache)
Accessories: Graceful Butterflies Die Set (A Cut Above by VERVE), stitched ovals dies (cottage cuts), glitter (Finnabair by Prima), washi tape, paper piercer, paper distresser, pearl star clusters, watercolor ground (Daniel Smith)