For No Other Reason Than Why Not

Sometimes you just want to give someone a card and tell them they’re fabulous because you feel like it. I especially enjoy the sentiment “Just Because” as an answer and reason for basically everything.

Like why did I choose watermelon colors and gold accents for this project? Just because!

Pop Tones card stock comes in so many bright colors, it was a bit hard to choose a cohesive palette, honestly. I had to narrow my inspiration down to summertime fruits and call it a day before my brain overloaded with possibilities.

For the card front I cut down a piece of Pop Tones 65 lb in Spearmint, which is a light minty sea foam green. I then placed a diagonal stripe stencil from Faber Castell over top and pressed my Versamark pad through it until I came away with a striped watermark pattern, which I heat embossed with Ranger Clear Embossing Powder.

I took a round mini ink blender and a Ranger Distress Ink in Lucky Clover and carefully blended the darker green color into the card stock from the outside, so that only a soft lighter glow remained in the middle.

You can see my technique step by step in the following video tutorial:

I practiced on a scrap piece of paper before hand-lettering the sentiment with a Pentel Pocket Brush pen. I ended up going over it with two pens (Pigma Brush and Sharpie Pen) due to the resist effect caused by embossing – in retrospect, I would have been fine touching up with just the Sharpie.

To help give the letters more dimension, I added a white “shadow” with a fine point Molotow paint pen. This seemed to go over the embossed parts much easier.

I then added the final touches: water splatter (to activate distress ink), Winsor and Newton gold gouache splatter, and black sumi ink splatter. Trimmed to fit the card base, rounded the corners with a corner chomper, and used my ATG to adhere.

So this card could be ready to go when I need to send it, I decided to make a bright pink envelope out of the Pop Tones Razzleberry card stock. Using the Martha Stewart Scoreboard, all I had to do was follow the directions for my card size (A2) and put the score lines where the chart directed me to. A few cuts and folds later, the envelope was ready for my finished card.

I have no idea who I’ll send this to yet, but I love having it ready to go in my stash!

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