Arnold Grummer and Stampendous Collaboration Part 1

Hello! This is an exciting post for me because I am part of a 2 week "Earth Day" blog hop between Stampendous and Arnold Grummer. If you have visited my blog before, you know how much I already love Stampendous. But Arnold Grummer was new to me. They make paper making supplies. This is something I have never done before. And truthfully, I was never interested in doing. I thought it was so much work to make one sheet of paper, it would take all day, etc. But, when I was asked if I wanted to be a part of this hop, I thought about it and decided that I love trying new crafts, so I should give it a shot. And guess what? I had a blast! My daughter (who is 10) and I decided to tackle this project together, and we came up with 4 beautiful sheets of paper in just over an hour.

 I think that once we play with the process a little more, and organize the flow of our work space, we could probably make the sheets a little faster, but I was really happy with what we accomplished in a pretty short amount of time. I absolutely love the Paper Making Kit, as it comes with everything you need except that paper you'll be recycling and water. That's pretty fantastic. We watched a couple of Arnold Grummer tutorials before we jumped in, and we found them to be very helpful. So here is my first completed card.

I think it is beautiful. All of the paper you see here, minus my brown card base, is from the handmade paper my daughter and I made. I really loved combining the different sheets to make one card. They each turned out so different, and it was great to experiment.

I used the Pretty Poppies Cling Stamps and Die sets. The flowers were stamped with VersaFine Clair Ink in Nocturne, and I watercolored them with my Koi watercolors. I love that some of the sparkly bits (also included in the kit) that were on this particular piece of paper resist the watercolor and just shine beautifully when the light hits it.

My background paper is filled with organic bits from my backyard. There's some zebra grass, acorn shells, dried leaves, etc. I love the texture and the look of that paper, so I really didn't want to cut it into small pieces. It was perfect for a background. The leaves started off as a yellow and a blue ditto that came home with my kids from school. They created that lovely shade of green.

I truly enjoyed not only making this card, but making the paper for the card. It was a great process, and I am happy that I got to do it with my daughter. She has started to save some papers that she would like to turn into handmade paper, and my son has expressed interest in trying his hand at it too. Next week, I will have more to share for this blog hop with Stampendous and Arnold Grummer. But for now, why not head over to the Stampendous Blog to see who else is posting for today? Thanks so much for stopping by. Have an inspiring day!