Pretty In Pink

Today’s blog post is a particularly exciting one for me, as I’ve been invited to guest design for ATCAS! If you’re not familiar with ATCAS they are a challenge blog with a clean and simple focus, and they run challenges every two weeks. They are definitely one of my favourite challenge sites, and it was such a wonderful surprise to be chosen as CAS Perfectionist recently.

The code word for this fortnight’s challenge is pink, and is open to interpretation in whatever way you chose. You can hop over to ATCAS to see how the design team interpreted it, and to play along yourself. I considered a couple of different options, and eventually settled on using some brand new (to me) products to create this soft and pretty floral card.

I started by stamping all the images from Pink and Main’s Doodled Flowers onto a snippet of watercolour paper and heat embossing them with white embossing powder. I’d originally intended to use clear but grabbed the wrong one, but the effect is almost the same anyway! I stamped and embossed twice more until I had three of most of the images. (My snippet wasn’t quite big enough to fit all of them the first time.)

Next I got on with colouring them. I wanted to paint the images with my Distress Inks. I only have a very limited palette of Distress Inks – four, in fact. I used three of them for this card – Spun Sugar, Milled Lavender, and Seedless Preserves. The fourth is Spiced Marmalade which wouldn’t really go. I squished the ink pads onto an acrylic block and used my waterbrush to paint the flowers. I went over each flower two or three times to build up the colours. For the leaves I used watercolour paint, as I didn’t have any suitably coloured Distress Ink.

Once all the stamped images had been painted and left to dry I took my scissors and carefully fussy cut them. The white embossing helped as it gave me a very distinct line to follow, whilst also being quite forgiving of any errors. I then spent quite some time fiddling around with arranging the images onto my white card base as I tried to work out exactly how I wanted them to look. I had adding some soft watercolour in the background behind the flowers, but quickly decided the card didn’t need it.

Before adhering the flowers in place I wanted to add my sentiment. I decided to use the Pink and Main Thanks Dies that I had just got in the same order as the flower stamp set. I cut the scripty word from a snippet of soft pink card stock, choosing one as close as possible to the Spun Sugar as I was able. Before cutting I added double-sided tape to the backside of the pink paper to make it easy to adhere once cut. I didn’t originally intend to use the shadow die as well, but after laying the pink card down I felt like something extra was needed. I cut the shadow part of the sentiment from vellum to keep the soft look.

Next came the task of adhering everything in place, which was a bit time-consuming! My carefully arranged flowers and leaves kept shifting slightly as I removed some to be able to add glue and adhere them. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I started by removing the backing paper from the thanks word and pressing it onto the vellum. I then used Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue on the vellum, hiding it behind the pink card, to adhere that to the card base.

I used my Tombow to adhere all the flowers and leaves into place. I started with those that were furthest back in the clusters. I carefully slid out each individual part from the arrangement, holding the others in place as I did, added a little of the glue, then with the aid of my craft tweezers I carefully slid them back into place. I had considered using foam tape on the front most flowers, but decided that the layers added enough appearance of dimension even without the foam tape.

As a final touch I added a coat of Wink of Stella to the sentiment, to give some shimmer.

This may have been a time-consuming card to make, mostly because of all the painting, fussy cutting, and arranging, but it was a very fun process. I’d almost go so far as to say it was relaxing to do! And I am very happy with how it turned out. It came together better than I had even hoped, and I love the soft look of it. I was concerned that I’d have difficulty getting a green that would work well with the other colours, but the one I used worked fabulously. Yes, definitely pleased with this one.

Thank you so much to ATCAS for having me along as guest designer! And to those of you playing along with the challenge – have fun!

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Addicted to CAS – Pink

Pink and Main – Anything Goes

 

Simon Says Stamp Work It Wednesday – Rain or Flowers