SSS DieCember Blog Hop, Mountain Horizon Cover

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Today I'm hopping with Simon Says Stamp, celebrating the new DieCember release. You should be arriving from Lisa Addesa's blog, and I have the full list below if you need it. As usual, there are some great prizes to be had. Simon is giving away a $25 store credit at each stop along the hop to a lucky commenter. In addition, you'll receive the cute snowman die pictured above with any DieCember purchase this weekend.

OK, let's get to the cards. Today I'm showing off my Mountain Horizon cover. This one is a lot of fun to work with, and I thought I would show you a few different ways to 'color' the die.

First up, inking with blending brushes. I die cut a panel of white cardstock, and then just inked each of the pieces with Pawsitively Saturated inks and blending brushes. I used Cabbage, Sage, Artichoke, and Kale for the greens, inking up the reflected parts of the landscape more heavily than the top portions.

For the blues, I used Marine, Cadette, and Royal.

I used my Be Patient dies and stamps for the the sentiments.

Next up, watercolor. This time I dry embossed rather than die cut the panel. I then used Kuretake Gansai watercolors to paint the panel, using the embossed lines as guidelines. 

I really kept this very loose and organic, I did not let the different areas dry between as I wanted a fair amount of bleeding to occur.

The sentiment is from my Stacked Holiday Sentiments set. It was embossed in gold on black cardstock, die cut, and popped up with foam tape.

For the next card, I let the cardstock do the coloring, choosing four blues, and three pinks to create my landscape. I also love that there is no 'right' orientation with this die, so instead of the landscape itself having seven layers, I flipped the die, and had the reflection have seven layers.

A simple reverse sentiment strip completed the look.

For my lasst card, I again die cut a white panel, but instead of using blending brushes to apply the ink, I went direct to paper, swiping the ink pads directly over my cardstock pieces. For the greens I had some mini cube inkpads which make it really easy to apply the ink. I used the colors from the Green Meadows set, in some cases applying multple colors to a piece to get the shade I wanted.

For the blues, I used Marine and Cadette, swiping more for that darkest blue.

I used another sentiment strip to finish things off.

I hope this gives you some ideas for how to use this cover. It's a lot of fun to work with! Your next stop on the hop is my good friend Cheiron Brandon, and the full hop list is below if you need it. 

Don't forget to leave a comment to be entered to win the store credit. Enjoy the hop!

Simon Says Stamp Blog 

Heather Hoffman

Barbara Tarayao

Cathy Zielske

Jennifer McGuire

Emily Midgett

Amy Rysavy

Heather Ruwe

Lisa Addesa

Miriam Prantner

Cheiron Brandon

Kath Stewart

Caryn Davies

Bonnie Crane

Rosemary Dennis

Heejung Hunsberger