Bloomin’ Perfect

Hello crafty friends! Happy Pre-Independence Day to everyone! Hope you’re all having a wonderful long holiday weekend.  I’m popping in today with a quick card to share.  I’ve really grown to love coloring flowers. I absolutely do not have a green thumb in real life, so I think being able to color them and put them on cards to send to friends is a great alternative.

Today, my card features the Organic Bloom stamp set from Mama Elephant. It doesn’t say what kind of flowers these are, but I think they kind of resemble Peonies; at least that’s what they look like they could be. I love Peonies. They remind me of my grandma. She had two beautiful Peonies bushes in front of her house that I remember from when I would spend time with her in the summer. They were gorgeous and they always smelled really good.

I stamped my flower image onto some Canson 140lb water color paper using my MISTI and some Versamark. I sprinkled on some Ranger White Embossing Powder – super fine detail and gave it a shot with my heat gun to melt the embossing powder.

I used my Zig Clean Color brushes to color in the flowers and leaves and moved the color around using an Aqua brush. I heat set between layers of color to speed up the drying time in between. This allowed me to put several layers and build my color as needed in areas. After my water coloring was dry, I used some Chameleon Colored pencils and smoothed out some of the color and added some deeper shading in some areas.

Once finished, I used my Die-namics Jumbo Fishtail Flags stax die to cut out the image using the largest of fishtail flags which measured 3 ½ x 4 ½.

Next, I wanted to create a neutral background that would contrast with the bold colors of my flowers. To do that I used the Lil’ Inker Designs Chevron background die. First, I cut a piece of black cardstock to 4 ¼ x 5 1/5. This matched the size of the background die perfectly. I positioned the black cardstock over the Lil’ Inkers die cover plate and placed a tiny amount of repositionable tape around the edge to hold my paper in place. I didn’t want it to shift when I ran it through my die cutting machine since the paper was the same size as my cover plate.

I love that this Chevron background die is very detailed, but it cut perfectly. I didn’t have any issues with sections of the paper not cutting all the way through or getting stuck in my die.

Once the background was cut out I cut another piece of 110lb cardstock in white that measured 4 ¼ x 5 1/5. I used my Ranger Glossy Accents to glue the chevron background in place on top of the white cardstock.

Finally, I used the “Hello” Honey Cuts die from Honey Bee Stamps and cut out three layers. Two layers of 80lb white cardstock and one layer that was gold foil. I’m kind of in love with this die set. It has the main scripty word die, but it also comes with two additional outline dies. This allows you to create an outline of the hello to frame the die cut word using a different color paper or even something like vellum. It has a solid die cut outline and then a fancy die cut with a dotted line that’s too cute! There’s also a matching hello stamp set from Honey Bee Stamps as well. They’re so fun and although it’s a simple sentiment, it really packs a lot of wow factor when you layer the paper to give them some dimension.

After gluing the 3 layers of my hello sentiment together, I set them aside to dry a bit.

Finally I was ready to put my card together.

I cut a side folding card base from 110lb white cardstock. My card was just ¼ inch larger than an A2 size.

I glued the background to my card front. Next, I used some dimensional foam on the back of the fishtail flag and adhered it to my card front at a bit of an angle.

Next, I used some glossy accents and glued the sentiment to the front of the flag.

The final element was a few of the tiny iridescent pink sequins from Studio Katia called Summer Fusion that I added to the front of the card.

I love the contrast of the bright colors with the black and white background. I think it really shows of the gorgeous flowers and even the sentiment has a wow effect.

Thanks for popping in and taking a peek at my latest card. Hope you enjoyed it. I can’t wait to mail it to someone and brighten their day.

Hope you have a safe & happy 4^th of July! I’ll be back on Wednesday with another Dare 2B Artzy project to share with you.

Hugs!

Tonya