Lili of the Valley has a new release out today, and I was lucky enough to play with it a couple of days ago. There are penguins. Lots of penguins. You guys know how much I love penguins. I had a hard time deciding which ones to use, there are so many good ones. There’s a slew of birthday penguins and a whole bunch of others, as well. Not only that, but they’re also releasing inky backgrounds. All kinds of shapes and colors. There’s pastels, brights, basically the entire rainbow, whole washes for backgrounds, splatters, stripes and every little inky thing your heart could want. I love the look of inky backgrounds, but 1 – I don’t like getting my fingers inky, and 2 – I prefer my whites to match. Watercolor paper and X-Press It don’t go well together. This is the perfect solution. You can print on any paper you want and get that unique watercolor look without getting your fingers inky or warping your paper, it’s brilliant!

For this card I chose a tealy green/blue watercolor splash background and a penguin with a camera in his hand. I knew I had to use this one as soon as I saw it, and an idea formed in my mind as to how my card would look in the end. The files are in png format, so they’re good quality and very easy to use together. I simply added my penguin to the splash background in Photoshop and printed. It couldn’t be easier. I love that I now have a watercolor look, but the paper is bright white, smooth and perfect for Copic coloring.

I diecut my panel with a faux stitch rectangle die from My Favorite Things, and glued it to a cardbase made from Tropical Teal cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I used a polaroid die, also from My Favorite Things, to diecut the frame four times out of that same Tropical Teal color and once from the same white cardstock I used for the rest (X-Press It blending card, btw). I stacked them all on top of each other for dimension. “Dimension is life”, as Laura Bassen always says. She’s my cardmaking hero.

A side look at that frame. You can see the colored cardstock from the sides, which gives such a fun look to a panel that is predominantly white.

I finished off my card with a white heat embossed Inky Wings sentiment on black cardstock. I also popped that up, because dimension really IS life. A few blue enamel dots from Papirdesign to get a tiny more blue in there to embellish.

There are two bundle packs with penguins. One has birthday penguins, and the other one is all other occasions, which is the pack I used for this card.

There were also five different packs of watercolor backgrounds released. I used the Watercolour Splashes collection for this one. It comes in sooo many different colors, and it’s awesome!! There’s also the Watercolour Backgrounds pack, the Watercolour Pastels pack, the Watercolour Brights pack and the Watercolour Stripes collection.