Guest Artist: Bobbi Lemanski

Recently my family cruised the Baltic Sea, visiting six wonderful countries. I was inspired by so many beautiful and brightly painted homes and buildings that I decided I wanted to do the same on my card today.  The newly released Neighbors stamp set was perfect!

I think the homes in this set are so charming. During our summer trip, I was so inspired by some of the cities we visited. We’d stroll down streets of brightly colored homes and buildings with unique scrolls and designs around the windows, something you don’t see often in the United States. I thought of our travels when I made this card. 

While this card is not difficult to make, it does require a lot of masking and coloring. However, if you are not a fan of masking, there is a companion Neighbors Die also available.

To create the card front, I started by creating two masks for each of the three buildings in the set and for the tree. I stamped the first line of homes in the front using my MISTI stamping tool. I masked these homes and stamped the second row and so on until I reached the top. I left some sky and treetop area spacing at the top. Here’s a look at my stamping/masking progress. Since my card is 5” X 7”, I did need to stamp more than three houses in a row to reach edge-to-edge, carefully changing up the order of the images to look more like a realistic neighborhood.

Once my houses were stamped, it was time to color! I drew color inspiration from places like Nyhavn in Copenhagen, Denmark and Stockholm, Sweden. I used specific color combinations that I captured in photos while I was there.

From blues and reds to Pinks and greens, I colored each one in. This was a bit time consuming, but very relaxing, too! I also added some scrolling details and other accessories to the buildings to give the neighborhood a slightly old- world look like Gdansk, Poland.

I added some blue sky eye-relief at the top, grassy green areas around the homes and adhered a few shrubs to the forefront for more greenery.  

To complete my card, I embossed the neighborhood phrase using WOW! White Opaque embossing powder on black cardstock and attached it in place. The entire card front was adhered to a 5” X 7” card base to complete the card. I think this is a neighborhood that would be inspiring to live in. I bet there are a few crafters and crafting rooms in some of these homes, too! 

I hope you enjoyed today’s project, thanks for stopping by!

You can find more of Bobbi’s work on her social media below.

Be sure to stop by Bobbi’s blog where she is sharing another wonderful interactive card featuring Wplus9!

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Featured Supplies

Here is a list of the featured Wplus9 supplies used in today’s project(s) along with links to purchase for convenience.

Neighbors Shop at: WP9

Neighbors Die Shop at: WP9