Sunny Flowers – SSS Blissful Card Kit

I had some extra time this morning before I left for work. Enough time, I thought, to make a card. I knew what I wanted to make, and sat down to get started on it. And when my alarm went to let me know I needed to leave I had only just finished fussy cutting my painted flower arrangement. That was about an hour and a half after I’d started working on it! That’s all I got done! Watercolouring may be time-consuming (at least for me) but it certainly is fun.

Since I received the latest Simon Says Stamp cardkit at the end of last week I’ve been wanting to get started on making a card that features the lovely flower stamp. The stamp is the main image in the Floral Bliss stamp set. I stamped and clear heat embossed the image onto a piece of watercolour card and started to paint it with watercolours. The kit does contain watercolour card and some watercolour paints, but I used some I already had.

As I painted I considered my colour palette carefully. I wanted to give the flowers bright, sunny colours which is why I went for yellows, orange and red. Although I used green for the leaves I went for shades of green that were towards the yellow end of the spectrum.

After I’d painted the flowers and let them completely dry I went back in with some colouring pencils and carefully added in some extra shading detail. I then fussy cut the completed image.

Using one of the sentiment stamps from the card kit I created a pattern on my card base. I angled my stamping and alternated colours. The inks I used are from Simon Says Stamp’s Fresh Fruit hybrid ink pad cube set, which I got in a previous card kit.

I trimmed down a piece of the same white card as the cardbase to create a panel for my flowers to sit on. I added a sentiment from Avery Elle’s Petal Panel which I decided to stamp in a green close to the darkest green I used on my image.

After laying all of my elements out I felt like I needed something more on the top panel. I decided to add some ink blending behind where the flower arrangement would sit. I used Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink and lightly sponged it on until I was happy with how it looked.

I used foam tape to adhere the ink blended panel onto the card base. I considered using foam tape to give some dimension to the flower arrangement too, but felt it would be too fiddly to do given all the small parts. Instead I adhered it down using Tombow Multi Mono Liquid glue. Finally I trimmed away the ends of the leaves that were overhanging the edge of the card.

I’m really pleased with this card. I love the layout, the colours, and the beautiful flower stamp. I’m happy with the painting, though I certainly could do with more practice. In hindsight I think it might have been better to have coloured lines rather than the clear embossing, as the details such as stems are lost with the clear embossing, although the orange ink blending behind helps make them stand out a bit more again.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Addicted to Stamps and More – Clean and Simple

AAA Cards – Birthday

Daring Cardmakers – June Elemental Inspiration

HLS Watercolour Challenge – Anything Goes

Mod Squad – Make Your Own Background

MFT Sketch Challenge – Sketch/Layout

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Anything Goes

Work It Wednesday – Sunshine