Pink and Grey Flowers – SSS Blissful Card Kit

A few days ago I had the idea of stamping through a stencil. It was an idea that seemed good in my head but didn’t quite work out in practice. (I still like the idea and am going to have another try at it soon, learning from the mistakes I made this time.) I didn’t want to give up on the card completely, so I ended up making this card instead. This card used a lot of elements from Simon Says Stamp’s Blissful card kit, but I did also bring in a few other things.

I started by laying the Marabu Growing Dots stencil over my card base and using post-it note to hold it in place. The tape doubled as a mask to keep the ink off of the edges of the card. I then used the Worn Lipstick Distress Oxide which came with the kit to ink blend over the stencil, concentrating my colour towards the bottom centre and fading out as I went towards the edges and top of the card.

After removing the stencil I placed the card base into my MISTI and lined up the large flower arrangement stamp from the Floral Bliss stamp set. I stamped it with MFT Black Licorice Hybrid Ink. I then used coloured pencils to add shading to the image. I used two shades of pink for the areas that were on the ink blending. For the white areas I used grey and a touch of black. Most of the shading effect comes from simply adjusting the pressure of the pencil.

Although this card is one layer I wanted to give the impression of some dimension. I wanted to make it look as though the stencilled and stamped area is a panel on the card base, so I masked off the card such that the outer edges were showing, then lightly sponged over them with SSS Barely Beige ink. This gave a subtle differentiation between the ‘panel’ and the card base.

Next I added my sentiment. I used the banner die from Carta Bella’s Forever die set to cut myself a mask, turning the die to get the flag tail on either end. I placed the resulting banner on my card to work out the positioning, then laid the negative portion over the top and removed the banner. I then ink blended the Worn Lipstick over the top. Once I was happy with the coverage I laid the banner mask back in place and very slightly offset the negative mask before sponging on some of the Barely Beige ink to give a slight drop shadow, giving the impression of dimension.

Finally I removed the masks and lined up my sentiment, from Altenew’s Super Script, and stamped it with the Black Licorice ink.

I am very happy with this card. It’s not perfect, and there are certainly ways in which it could be improved, but I learned a lot in the process of making it, I had fun with it, and it turned out pretty well! I enjoyed adding the shadowed faux-dimension. I think I could perhaps have been a bit bolder with it, adding a little more to make it more obvious. I would like to play with it some more when I make future one layer cards.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

AAA Cards – Birthday

Muse – Inspiration Card (The elements I took inspiration from were the stencil, ink blending, monochrome flowers, banner, and colour scheme.)

Seize the Birthday – Birthday and One Layer

Watercooler Wednesday – Anything Feminine Goes (edit – where it was chosen as Watercooler Rockstar!)