New Year's Mojo

On New Year's Eve day, my husband and I went on our traditional post-Christmas shopping spree. We always have a little extra money to splurge with, him at the Comic Book store and me at the craft store. After we rang in the new year, we spent the first few hours of Jan. 1 cuddled on the couch between two shaking dogs (we live only a few miles from the big fireworks at Baltimore Harbor, and they made the whole house rattle), enjoying the treats we bought for each other. He picked out some great seashells stamps for me, so I was really excited to play with them. I also wanted to play with my new masking paper and textured paper. For design inspiration I went to Mojo Monday, and ended up using both sketches for this week. (Wow, the projects there are amazing.)

I used brown to stamp the shells, because I wanted a softer feeling than black would give. The shells were shaded with orange & brown watercolor pencils. This was my first try at watercolor pencils, as my mom gave me a set she'd picked up second-hand at her church's rummage sale. For extra dimension on the paper I applied ink with a damp papertowel. I especially like how the ink brought out the pre-embossed texture of the paper.
Since both cards had circular centers, I couldn't resist hiding a brad between the layers to make the main images spin.

Inspiration: Mojo Monday #171 Round or Square? sketches
Supplies: Rubber stamps by Hero Arts and Inkadinkado/Tin Can Mail, Royal watercolor pencils & brush, StazOn (blue & brown) & Tim Holtz (antique linen) inks, Cricut Expression & Paisley cartridge, SCAL2, ATD/Relaxed, Recollections & Royal cardstocks, ZipDry glue, stash brads, Martha Stewart scissors, pop-dots (two sizes)