Whimsy Stamps ~ Congratulations ~ Pinwheels and Stars

Hey crafty pals, I'm back today with a creation I made for Whimsy Stamps using a range of lovely products from my Whimsy Stash. I tried using sprays through a stencil and I've got to be honest, I regret everything! However, not one to like to throw away crafty adventures and wanting to see where I could take this, I kept going, adding some defining lines on the stencilled fireworks and then adding details around it to create a starry fireworks sky for a congratulations card.

The image above is my final card after I had a whole lot of mishaps on my crafty adventure. I initially only wanted tiny stars around the stencilling, thinking I'd keep it pared back and gentle in design. But the more I looked at it, the less I liked the blurry edges of the stencilled stars around the fireworks. I didn't mind the fireworks being a little blurry, they're exploding after all, but the other elements didn't look right to me this way. 

I like to think of the fireworks stencilling as having soft edges. Fireworks explode in pops of colour and fade with cloudy edges don't they?! Well that's my take on this anyway. I ink blended the background with a range of distress ink colours, which I really loved (hence my reluctance to bin this!) I have to be honest, this was a learning curve, I won't use sprays with a stencil again, unless I specifically want the bleed through effect. The sprays just leached under the stencil and did their mischief, so there wasn't a lot of controlling this. I decided to push through and add a few more layers for added interest and texture. So I used another stencil to create the extra 'pops' in the centre of the fireworks using some fairy dust embossing paste. I then added some tiny stars, which I ended up pulling off and putting bigger stars, because the glue spurted out the sides and interacted with the distress oxide creating plumes I didn't want! (Yep, this is basically a lessen in what 'not' to do!) LOL.

So my plan to rescue this creation, now included pulling off those tiny stars where the glue seeped around the edges, replacing them with slightly bigger ones but ensuring I used a tiny blob of glue to avoid that happening again! The first pic shows all this once I'd fixed it! But I thought it was still interesting to share the journey. I'm still crafting one handed thanks to my injury, happily it's my non dominant hand, so I can still colour, yippee! I finished this design with a lovely 'Congratulations' sentiment from the Before and After Stamp Set from Whimsy Stamps. A sassy fun 'new baby' stamp set. I wanted to keep this card a more generic congratulations card, as I think this could work for many occasions. I went on to add the confetti and stars from my stash. At this stage, I'm not sure if I rescued this design or made it worse! Jury's out on that, hehe. But it's all fun in the learning right?! 

Thanks for popping in today friends, I hope you enjoyed this crafty adventure, I sure had fun putting it together and learning from my silly mistakes! I think it's good to share my not so clever crafty journey's right along with those I feel like I got right! We're all learning after all. I'll be back again soon with another crafty adventure. Until then, have a great weekend. Hugs xoxo