I’m so excited to be part of another amazing Hop with Courtney Kreeber’s Facebook group called Handmade Happiness! We picked another crafter within the group to CASE, and that person selected someone else. In the event you are new to the acronym, CASE means Copy And Share Everything, which means you use another person’s creation as your starting point and give them credit for their original work. Sometimes you can keep it all the same, or put your own flare and design into it making an entirely new creation. I’m being CASE’d by the wonderful Virginia Fairchild, whose post you can find on Instagram or at PassionsAndDistractions. When you are done here, please pop over to see which card of mine Virginia chose to CASE and how she put her individual spin on it!!! (I’m so excited to see it myself!)

For my CASE, I chose the amazing Anna Mahtani who blogs at CraftyAnnaStudio. I was immediately drawn by her beautiful watercoloring and her knack for creating great card designs. A couple cards really spoke to me as both designs I would like to CASE and techniques I wanted to use. I couldn’t decide between the 2 so I CASE’d them both, cause I’m an overachiever like that! LOL (My family would attest that statement is SO not true… unless it involves crafting!!!). Because I mentioned Anna’s amazing watercoloring, I’ll share this card first! Anna’s stunning floral is on the left and mine is one the right.

Isn’t her photography amazing too?!? Her project is featured in an awesome post she did called Five Simple Techniques Using Watercolor Pencils. I didn’t have the same stamp, but I had a similar bouquet from the same manufacturer, Dahlia by WPlus9. I used Derwent watercolor pencils to color my image, using some of the techniques she outlined in her post and was very pleased with the results! I hadn’t use my pencils in *forever*, and her post was just what I needed to dust off the rustiness! I altered my color combo to suit my set of pencils, but I loved the soft yellow wash of color around the bouquet and *had* to use that too. I kept the layout very similar, and since I didn’t have a label like sentiment I copied the look by stamping in Versamark on black and heat embossing in white. The sentiment is from Jane’s Doodles All Occasions sentiment set. Like Anna, I chose not to add embellishments so the floral could be the focus, but I did spatter the card front as I loved the look on Anna’s card. Here’s a closeup:

Ready for something completely different? As I browsed Anna’s great website, one card really stuck out as being different. This may not be Anna’s typical style, but I fell in love with the card and the technique and HAD to CASE it! Again, Anna’s gorgeous card is on the left and mine is on the right.

Isn’t that freaking awesome?!? Her card is featured in her post Multicolored Embossing Technique for Backgrounds. I actually swooned when I saw this card and immediately knew I had to use this to make an anniversary card for my hubby. Again, I lacked the same stamp but found a masculine background stamp in my stash that I thought would work great for the technique and picked a background stamp called Cogs by Impression Obsession. Since I was using gears, I didn’t want to have 3 defined areas of color, so I sprinkled the embossing powders selectively over the design. I think I like Anna’s technique better as she had more contrast between the colors and with my sprinkling caused them to mix and blend more, causing more of a rusty effect. It’s yet another cool technique, but it just wasn’t as swoon worthy. I keep my design as similar as possible given my supplies and the need I had for my card. I used silver mirror cardstock for my frame and sentiment instead of gold. My sentiment didn’t have a shadow layer, so I die cut a vellum gear to be my base layer. Because it was so much bigger than the sentiment itself, I chose thinner vellum for its translucency. The “love you” is a Momenta die and the “DUDE” is from We R Memory Keepers High Rise Alpha dies. The sub-sentiment is from Pink & Main’s True Love stamp set. Again, I have to give Anna props on her photography… man was all that shininess hard to photograph!!! Here is another shot, just to give you both views!

Yeah, just doesn’t have the oomph that Anna’s did, but the hubby did love it, so that is all that really matters. Love that man, though I showed him Anna’s card and explained the whole CASE thing and about a minute in his eyes were completely glassed over and I was talking to myself! LOL I would be upset but the same thing happens to me when he starts talking woodworking!!! Ha!

Here’s your homework: First you need to see what Virginia did to CASE me (especially since I think my style is ALL over the place! Then, you need to see who Anna picked to CASE cause I am sure it turned out amazing!!! From there, if you have time, continue on the hop or search #casethefellowcreator. Some are blogs, most are YouTube videos, and a couple Instagram posts. A little variety to keep it fun! Leave me a comment and tell me how you think I did with my CASE too! Thanks for dropping by!!!