Floral Thoughts Mini Series 3 | ft. Clearly Besotted "Fresh Flowers"

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

Today I have a couple new-to-me things going on in the card. An image I've never used before and a technique I am still learning and playing around with.

I have another "Thinking of You" card today, which I'm sure comes as no surprise. At the moment these are my favourite cards to create, perhaps because they are so versatile. This was also the first time I pulled out the bluebells image from Clearly Besotted (I assume they are bluebells. That's the way I see them.) I felt they would work perfectly for this week's Fusion Challenge.

Since learning the shadowing technique (I'll create a post about it later), I have been trying to incorporate it more and more into my colouring, especially with florals. I absolutely love single layer cards that look as though there are multiple layers.

To begin, I stamped the bluebell image from Clearly Besotted's Fresh Flowers stamp set on to Copic friendly paper using Memento Tuxedo Black ink.

I masked off the image and sponged Tumbled Glass Distress Ink through a damask stencil starting in the upper left corner and pulling the ink lightly down towards the bottom right.

I removed the mask and then coloured the image with Copic markers, because these flowers are smaller than many of the other images by Clearly Besotted, I only used two shades of blue and two shades of green for the flower.

I then used a W5 and went around the image where the shadows would lay if my light source were in the upper left corner of the panel. I used a very light hand for this, as the W5 marker is rather dark and I wanted to keep my shadows thin. I went over the shadow area again with the W3 marker, making the line just a touch thicker.

I covered the blossoms quite liberally with clear Wink of Stella, but once again my camera has failed to do justice to the amount of shine this pen gives off.

The greeting is also stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black ink, to ensure that I didn't have different shades across the panel.

I then mounted the panel on a piece of soft blue card stock and wrapped them with the twine.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own.

This card is for:

Fusion Card Challenge: Something Blue

Floral Thoughts Mini Series 2 | ft. CTMH Hawaiian Hibiscus

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

Not that I really ever really need a reason to make a card, because let's face it; I do it all the time, every day anyway, I wanted to create something that would reflect the personality of the person I intended to send it to.

A friend of mine just recently got some not awesome news from her doctor, and I wanted to create something that really was "her". She is the bubbliest, most happy person. Always has a smile on her face and a friendly word for everyone, and I wanted to do something that not only captured that, but reminded her of it as well.

To begin, I created a few masks of both the flowers and set them aside. I then stamped the images on Strathmore Bristol Smooth cardstock. After stamping the images, you *must* wait for the ink to dry. I  have tried a few different archival inks and they all need a bit of time on this cardstock. Probably because of the ultra-smooth texture of the paper.

I then used my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers to colour in each of the flowers, I was really just playing around with the different combinations to see (for myself) what worked and what didn't.

I then stamped the Recollections ColourSplash "Thinking of You" greeting with one of their ombre inks and added a few sequins to finish off the panel.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own.

Floral Thoughts Mini Series 1 | ft. Clearly Besotted

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

Welcome to the first day of my Floral Thoughts Mini Series! At this point I don't know how many cards will be in this series, but the thing is, I really (REALLY) love Clearly Besotted and floral images and "Just because" cards, so I figured I would make a mini series that will go on until I've moved on to something else.

I mentioned before that I recently got a nice little Clearly Besotted haul, and I cannot stop using them. I really can't say or recommend them enough.

To begin, I stamped the floral image from Clearly Besotted's "Friends Forever" stamp set with Memento Tuxedo Black ink on to Copic Friendly Paper. I also created a mask for the image using 2" post it tape.

I masked off the image and sponged Antique Linen Distress Ink with a random stencil (sorry, don't know which one or where it came from). I then removed the mask and coloured the image with Copic markers.

I then covered the flowers with clear Wink of Stella. I used some twine from my stash and wrapped it around the card base and then tied a knot.

I stamped the greeting in Memento ink as well so that the blacks would match. I had considered using sequins or enamel dots across the space, but it started to look way too cluttered and ultimately I'm very happy that I left them off.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own.

This card is for:

Time Out Challenge #57

"May all your Weeds be Wild Flowers"