Altered Playing Card Challenge Week 18

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Altered Playing Card Challenge. We are on week 18 and going full force. There have been some new members join the Facebook group this passed week and I really hope they join in and have a good time

If you have missed any of the previous week's here are the links

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 
Week 7
Week 8

Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Week 16
Week 17

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I have had a pretty rough week, sometimes real life just gets out of control and so this week I really wanted to focus on beauty and some of my favorite quotes. It just so happens that these two quotes are both by Ralph Waldo Emerson

For starters - I received this wonderful box of samples from DecoArt

They carry a wide array of products, paints, varnishes, mediums, sprays, enamels, glow in the dark paints... it's endless.

At any rate, I wanted to break out everything and try it all out right away but for now I settled on trying out some paints

I used three colors for my first card

All of the colors I'm using today come from their mixed media line

I cannot tell you how vivid and beautiful these colors are. I used a violet, purple and white for this. I simply added a few splotches of my three colors to my craft mat, like in the photo above

Next, I took my altered playing card and spritzed it with a bit of water (the water helps the paint to spread and run a bit more)

I just dabbed my card into the paint and moved it around a tad and picked it directly up. I did not slide it through as in last weeks cards. 

I ended up with some splotchy parts, which I kinda liked how it turned out - I set this one aside to dry

I did the same thing with card #2 but this time used some other colors

This time I spritzed my paint and card with water and as I ran my card through the paint I twisted a bit more - Here is how this card came out

Since I didn't use white, I got more coverage on this one, again, I set the card aside to dry

I decided to go with flowers on both these cards and I used some from Stampotique

Sunflower Large, Carols Flower Large and Carols Flower Small - all by Artist Janet Klein

I stamped all the flowers onto white card stock and heat embossed them all

I then colored my Large and Small flowers with copic markers

Next I simply cut them out

I adhered both to my background with glue and I offset my large flower and trimmed the edges

of course I have to doodle a bit so I used a black marker and drew some stems for my flowers

For my second card, I did the same with stamping and heat embossing the Sunflower but instead of coloring the flower, I thought it looked perfect with no color against that bold background

I added my sentiments to both cards. I just stamped both sentiments onto white card stock with black ink and then cut them out. I edged both with black as well, I think this helps them to stand out. I always add my sentiments last

Here are the finished two cards for this week

Both background were done the same but both are very different. 

I really needed some beauty in my life this week

Can't wait to see what you all come up with!!

CHEERS!
p.s. - Is there something you would like to see in our challenges? A theme that you want to do? Make sure to let me know in the comments if you have some ideas.