Lifted Spirits Viva la Verve

Hi friends! It's the first Fri-yay of a new month and that means it's time for me to host a new sketch challenge over at Viva la Verve! This week's sketch has lots of layers, but you can dress it up or dress it down as you like. I hope you can play along with us! I love seeing the linky fill up with so many lovely cards to take a peek at throughout the month.

My sample card is also a sneaky peek at a new set we'll be releasing on April 10th. Our new release spotlight blog hops start tomorrow (4/7), so be sure to tune in for a chance to win some shiny new Verve! And for some early peeks, click on over today to the Viva la Verve blog to see a bunch of sneaky peek samples from the Divas using the April VLV sketch.

For my card, I started with the butterfly from the new Hope Lifts stamp set. It's similar, but a bit larger than the butterfly in our previously released Sparkly Dreams set (which was briefly retired due to a lost artwork file, but I'm happy to say the lost has been found and it's back among our offerings!). I embossed the butterfly in white once on white cardstock and once on vellum. Next I colored with watercolor pencils and blended with a wink of stella pen.  Then I cut the white cardstock butterfly out with the coordinating Lifted Hope Die Set. The vellum butterfly was cut with the butterfly die that has no antennae from the Butterfly Dreams Die Set. The image in Hope Lifts is larger than this previously released die, so it cuts off parts of the stamped image, but it makes for a perfect layered dimension to this image. I then cut the antennae from the same Butterfly Dreams die set out of smoky slate and then layered together with some grey pearls.

Next I worked on the sentiment panel, using a cereal box stencil I made with a smaller circle die to mask off a circle die cut and then do a watercolor wash with some Prima color bloom spray.  Once this was dry, I embossed the sentiment from Hope Lifts in white over the watercolor.  This is matted on a big pinking circle from so saffron. I liked how this gave the look of a sun, so added some embossed clouds to the background panel, then some embossed stripes for the rounded square panel.

The vertical panel is embossed with polka dots, then I used the same spray ink for the background and added on a new border die from the Lacey Trim Duo die set.

Alright, there you have it! Thanks so much for stopping by today! It's sure to be a busy weekend for me with daily blog hops and the boys' first ever flag football practice and game on Saturday. They're totally pumped for it, though. I'm just praying for no injuries! {grin}

Enabler's List
Stamps: Hope Lifts (Verve Stamps)
Paper: smoky slate, so saffron (SU!), white (Neenah), vellum
Ink: dragonfly blue color bloom spray, Scenic Route watercolor pencils (Prima), wink of stella glitter pen, versamark
Accessories: Lifted Hope Die Set, Butterfly Dreams Die Set, Lacey Trim Duo Die Set (A Cut Above by VERVE), clouds, stripe and polka dot embossing folders, pinking circles, classic circles nestabilities (Spellbinders), corner rounder, pearls