Jessica's 2k IG Hop!

Hello friends! Happy Thursday (I love that it's Thursday, because that means tomorrow is Friday, and that means it's almost the weekend. Yay!!) Today, I'm here celebrating a very sweet crafty friend's success... Jessica Frost-Ballas has reached 2000 followers on Instagram! r(What an incredible milestone!) She's an incredible card maker, harpist, a gourmet cook whose foodie photos give me a complex about my sad meatloaf, and a wonderfully supportive friend. I'm so grateful for a chance to support her, as she so often does for other crafters!

Several other crafters are part of the Instagram hop, and you can find a list of their blog posts HERE if you don't IG. There are several giveaways, including a gift certificate to The Ton Stamps as well as a GC to Butterfly Reflections Ink, so be sure to look out for those!!!

The participants in the hop were given this inspiration photo to use if we so chose:

And here's my take on it:

I started with this redonkulus ranunculus image from the new Wplus9 release. I seriously can't get enough of this gorgeous bouquet of flowers... it looks stunning in any color combination and with any technique. I heat embossed it on some Arches Cold Press watercolor paper using White Satin embossing powder. I then used my new Dr. Ph Martin's Hydrus Watercolors to watercolor the images. I'm still learning with these beautiful watercolors, but I have to say that I really love them! They definitely require different techniques than the Zig markers, but I'm learning to manipulate the color with more and less water. All it takes is a little trial and error! Luckily for me, watercolor is a very forgiving medium. 

I die cut PTI's Scripted die from white pearl card stock, then stamped the rest of the greeting from the coordinating stamp set in The Ton's Noir ink.I stamped the background of the card base with The Ton's Lofty Mint ink using The Ton's Haute Stripes stamp (there's something so timeless and classic about stripes and flowers).  I matted the watercolored panel with some silver mercury glass card stock. The final touch was to add some little sparkly silver dots using a silver Wink of Stella pen. 

The card's greeting echoes my sentiments to Jessica: I am so happy to consider her a friend, and I am so thrilled for her success! You'll have another 2000 IG followers soon enough! Cheers to you, friend! 

Here's the order for the rest of the hop (all users can be found on Instagram):

1 Jessica - @JessicaAFrost
2 Emily - @eamidgett
3 Laurel - @laurelbeard
4 Lisa - @lstein0 (that's a zero not an 'o')
5 Audrey - @audrey_tokach
6 Chris - @skidoomomma
7 Keeway - @kiwi.koncepts
8 Michelle @emellell73
9 Effie - @thetonstamps
10 Ruby - @rubznaz
11 TaeEun - @tyoocat
12 Amy - @craftee1

Have a fantastic day, and enjoy hopping around! There is such a fun array of styles and stamps used here... Love each and every project!!!