12 Kits of Occasions - February '16

Welcome to another month of The 12 Kits of Occasions!  This month was a really fun one.  The theme is "Watercolor Wonder", and our oh-so-generous host Nancy really created a kit chock full of all things watercolor related.  She included so many cool things in this kit beyond the typical papers, die cuts, and embellishments like watercolor pencils, masking fluid, and rock salt to name a few.  She even sent us all watercolors and water color brushes.  So nice, huh?!  So many of these items were new to me, and this kit really stretched me to say the least.  I love the watercolor look but struggle with it and had many do-overs.  I'm not totally sold on any of my cards, but I did enjoy what I learned in the process.  And that is what is important right?  We can't grow if we don't stretch ourselves.  And I can't think of a more beautiful kit to help inspire me to stretch.

A card for a purple-loving sister of mine. :) I had to leave and come back to this one a few times, but I'm hoping she'll like it.  I know she'll appreciate the effort. :) I'm also linking this one up to the Simon Says: Anything Goes Challenge.

There was a really fun butterfly die in the kit, and I used the negative as a stencil to watercolor my butterfly on the next card.  I topped it off with some gold shimmer and some of the fun sequins from the kit.

This next floral card was inspired by ColourQ #330.  I was inspred by the colors, floral arrangement, and even the black accents.

I used the watercolor pencils on the flowers and the palette watercolors Nancy sent us for the watercolor wash.  I was trying to channel the fabulous Dawn McVey on this one. 

Nancy also included Papertrey's beautiful Butterfly Cover Plate die cut, but I wanted to think of a different way to use it, so I placed it behind this circle window.  I watercolored the background and put the rock salts on it, which created the fun big splotches.  I'll be honest...I'm a little unhappy with how it turned out.  The sentiment is off.  Sigh.  

I really love the simplicity of this last one.  It was completely inspired by CAS(E) This Sketch #161.

I think Alenew's Magnolia's are beautiful and I thought about adding pink watercolor, but decided the gold embossing was pretty fabulous on it's own.  My gold stem was the leftover piece I trimmed of the birthday Swoosh die on the card above and the the leaf (it seemed like it needed one) was a petal I trimmed off another magnolia.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not capture the beautiful shimmer on the navy blue birthday die cut.  It's the prettiest paper! 

Phew.  We made it!  I barely scratched the surface of the goodies in this kit, so make sure you visit the 12 Kits Blog so you can see how the other 12 Kitters and our guest were inspired.  They are amazing!  I'll leave you with one last shot of them all together.  Thanks for stopping by!