MDS Blog Hop ~ What are we working on?

It's MDS Blog Hop time again!  What is an MDS Blog Hop? Well, we are a group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators who have grouped our blogs together to form a blog hop.  We hop on the second and fourth thursday's of each month to highlight our love of MDS.   This week we are showing you what we are working on in MDS.  I am working on Faux Mixed Media techniques.   I loved the look of some Mixed Media projects that were shown at the Stampin' Up! convention last summer, and I had been planning to make some of my own, but I never got around to it.  I wanted to find a way to make it simpler, no mixing paint, and less chance for error.  I wanted my "randomness" to be less "random" :)

 Here is what I came up with. I opened an 8 x 8 page, because I don't have a 12 x 12 printer and I wanted to be able to print from home.
I started with a newsprint background.  There are several downloads that included a newsprint, such as First Edition, Newsprint, and Mixed Medley.  I used Mixed Medley on my page.   Then I needed to add  my paint layer.  There are several downloads that offer stamp brushes that look like a paint wash.  I used the new Happy Watercolor on my page.  I added the stamps, resizing them and flipping them, and layering them to get different looks.   This is the beauty of MDS, you can just delete what you don't like.   I colored  my stamps Pool Party.   I also used the dots from the Happy Watercolor Download in the center of the page.

 Next I added some stamps.  I used stamps from the Sweet Summer download as well as a heart from Days to Remember.    I printed the page out on some watercolor paper in my home printer. 




Next I used my aqua painter to color in the stamps.  I tried to do this somewhat rapidly because I wanted to maintain a whimsical doodley look. 

I actually wanted to make some smaller versions for card fronts too, so I exported the large version to a photo file, opened a new project page, added 4 photo boxes and filled them with the "photo" of my 8x8 page.  Now I had 4 4x4 card fronts.  

After I had my page finished I printed off a sheet of text that I could cut out and add to my projects.

For more details on the "how to" of it, you can check out my digital blog "Beth's Digital Cuts".  I hope you like my projects today!  next head on over to Holly's blog where I am sure you will see something great! I hope you enjoy our Hop!