Red flowers

Happy Sunday everyone. Craft day again – well, hubby is golfing, so I am playing too.

This card was composed from the background called ‘Squared Off Cover Panel’ from Reverse Confetti. This is a new buy from Seven Hills Crafts – ordered one day, and delivered the next. Always fabulous service.

Anyway, I knew I wanted to use this cover panel, and cut it twice – once in white, and once in a browny/goldy card from Creative Expressions. I then placed a piece of double sided sticky sheet on the back of the white panel, and placed the browny squares back into the white die cut. I stuck this down onto a plain white card base.

Now to the flowers – back to my old favourite from Altenew, the ‘Adore You’ stamp and die set. Love ’em, love ’em! I took some Crafters Companion satin red and satin green card, stamped using my Ranger Perfect Medium, and embossed with detail bright gold embossing powder. Now, you have to be quick with this embossing, as I have found the coating on this particular card isn’t exactly heat proof! (Trust me, I found out the hard way) So, I heat embossed from the back of the card……wish I’d thought of that first!

Anyhoo, I then cut out the flowers and leaves, and arranged them around the cover plate, took a photo so I could place them back again, and glued down with Pinflair glue gel. This gel gives some time to move things around a little, and you can then even stick the leaves underneath.

The sentiment is from that same stamp set.

I shall be entering this into the following challenges:

Altenew July 2017 inspirationphoto inspiration (colours and flowers)

Time Out ChallengesInspirational words

Just Us Girlssomething old +/- something new

Allsorts Challengephoto inspiration (colours and flowers)

 

Lotus layering

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On arriving home from work I thought I would have a little focused play with a set of layering dies. I have used them before, but decided to play a little more. The inspiration for this card came from another challenge – Make my Monday weekly craft challenge.  The challenge is to use at least three of the colours of the rainbow listed – red, orange, yellow, green, blue indigo, violet.

I decided to go with blue flowers, and only used two layers of the lotus stamps, along with green for the leaves. I wanted them to hang over the edge of the white card, as some flowers do seem to go wild (not lotus flowers, I know, but here is my creative license). I was wondering what to do with the other colours, as I didn’t want to create a lot to go with the flowers, and was considering stamping the sentiment in one of the other colours, then my eyes fell upon a little bee that I had stamped and coloured for another project. I thought the little bee could add the yellow, and add a little quirkiness to the card. Therefore, I have used blue, green and yellow. Hey presto. Sorted.

Then to decide what sentiment, in what colour. Should I try another of the colours? How do I tie it all in? Again – as I don’t really clear my crafting desk away completely (who does?) –  I saw this sentiment from the Altenew set of the same name. I decided to use it as the challenge had inspired me to create the card, and decided to stamp it in blue. The blue I used was actually a mix of two blues, both from Catherine pooler – Something Borrowed and Fiesta Blue. Each of them didn’t work alone, but when I inked with one, then the other it seemed to tie in quite nicely, I thought. Then a blue base card.

Compared to my previous couple of days crafting with mixed media, very little adrenaline, no fear, just all seemed to work.

 

Adore you and smile

After a fairly decent day at work, I wanted to craft and play with some of my starry and shiny water colours.

Once again I have turned to the Altenew stamp set ‘I Adore you’ for a variation on a background. Again I stamped one image several times in Ranger Perfect Medium, and embossed the outline of the flowers with a copper embossing powder. I felt this particular flower had a lot of detail in it, and I liked the way it looked when stamped in different directions.

I also stamped some of the smaller flower/bud images in a couple of places where I felt it needed something extra, or there was too much white space. The flowers themselves I coloured in my Gansai Tambi starry colours to add some depth and sheen, using the white gold shade for  a lighter look which didn’t detract from the copper embossing on the flowers. I decided to change from colouring the background, and instead wanted the flowers themselves to be the centre of attention.

The sentiment is Altenew ‘Half Tone Smile’, stamped and embossed in copper, and cut out using the matching die, and added some sequins which seemed to match the colour tone, and one black jewel for the dot above the ‘i’.

I seem to be enjoying stamping and embossing at the moment, especially creating my own backgrounds, with a simple sentiment. Sometimes a card doesn’t have to say a lot to mean a lot. If you know what I mean.

I’ll be entering this card into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge, with a theme of Anything Goes.