Welcome to our fun Background check blog hop.  

If you did not start at the beginning of the hop I have linked to every ones blogs below. I hope you are inspired and come over to our Facebook page and play along.

                       Tara -Beginning of hop
Nancy E
Laurie
                   Nancy F-you are here
                 Deborah—Next stop
Chala
Dawn
Kia
Susan

With todays blog hop we are show casing the “Life changing” blending brushes from Picket Fence Studio. I have to be honest when I first heard about these brushes i was really unsure, did I really need a new type of brush considering I already had the Clarity brushes and well the answer is YES, yes I did!   Now that I have tried tried them I can say they really are AMAZING.  

Is there or has there been a product that came out that you though hmm do I really need that, then turned around and bought it. Hah

The blend you get with them is like no other.. the proof is in the pictures below. 

For my project I kept it fairly simple really focusing on the brushes and blend.  Because I kept it simple I decided hey wouldn't it be fun to make 8 cards.. Yes 8 i kind of got into a rhythm with the brushes and really enjoyed how effortless they were that I could not stop making backgrounds. 

For the first set I pulled out this Dina Wakley stencil, and two shades of purple distress oxide ink. I started off with shaded Lilac and blended that on, then shifted the stencil over slightly and went over it again with the Wilted Violet ink. I love how this turned out, it kind of has a 3D look to it. 

I really liked how the purple turned out so I decided I would do second set in the orange tones. I pulled out Ripe Persimmon, Carved Pumpkin and Dried Marigold and repeated the process from the first card.

Only change was the arraignment of colors and how many times I moved the stencil.  I decided to start with the darkest colors first and use the lightest last. I found it just looked better once it was finished. 

Because I just couldn't stop and I really loved the look of this stencil, I was curious how it would look in Rainbow.. well hello it looks amazing and my goodness the blending is like nothing I have done before.

I found with the round blending tool I would always get streaks and would need to mist the project with water just to blend things out a bit, but not with these AMAZING LIFE CHANGING BRUSHES.  The blending is so smooth and its evert less, no more sore arms from blending like crazy.

Of course I couldn't just stop at one type of Rainbow blended background, so I took to my stencil stash to find something fun to play with. I settled on this intricate Hero Arts stencil, i thought would work well for the Rainbow of colors.

I played around with a few different color combinations for the rainbow sets. I used barn door, mowed lawn, mustard seed, blue print sketch and wilted violet for the first set of leafy stenciled backgrounds.

For the second set I decided to switch the mustard seed for squeezed lemonade, the mowed lawn for lucky clover and the blue print sketch for mermaid lagoon. I love how BRIGHT and saturated the backgrounds were. 

Now that I had all these backgrounds done it was time to turn them in to cards. 

I cut down all the panels to two different sizes – this was not planed I had a messed up some die cutting that I needed to correct. One set of each background measures 53/8 x 3 15/16  (give or take ) To die cute these panels out I  used the My Favorite Things stitched rectangle stack, the smaller set measures 3½ x 4 7/8  

I decided to do all my die cutting at onces, so I pulled out some of my sentiment dies from both My favorite things and Concord and 9^th  and ran it through my Gemini jr. I used  black heavy weight cardstock and stick it adhesive to  die cut each sentiment 4 times.  I wanted to layer each sentiment at least once to give a little dimension hence why I die cut so many. In hindsight i don't thing I would do so many cards at once, layering each sentiment took a while. 

Once I had that complete it was time to finish of the inside of the card,  I cut down both white and colored cardstock to fit nicely inside the base of the card,which was a standard A2. I pulled out my misti, some coordinating sentiment stamps from both my favorite things, Concord and 9^th, Picket Fence  and that beautiful Versa Clair ink ( Another must have in my opinions, as you get such an amazing crisp inking)  and started stamping out all the sentiments.  

I adhered everything together and put the final touches on the out side of the card, layering the distressed panels onto the mirror cardstock, and on to the base of the card.  I had intended on added some gems and sequins but alas time got the better of me and I didn't manage to do it. 

I hope hope you enjoyed the process and found some inspiration. We would love to see what you come up with so please come play along with us. 

This weekend there is a coupon code  BRUSH20 to get 20% off the Life Changing blending bushes.

 I highly recommend them, if you haven't tried them already that is.

Remember to leave a comment on each of the blogs to be entered into the giveaway, we have 8 prize backs and 1 $50.00 store gift certificate to giveaway. YES PLEASE. hehe 

Have a beautiful Weekend. 

Nancy  :)