Summer's Here !!

A very happy Friday to you all and the title of this blog entry really doesn't reflect with what's  happening outside the window, ( grey and very damp!) but hey we can dream a little.

Walking around the garden earlier this week I felt I wanted to make a card that reflected the colours of the flowers in bloom at the moment i.e. nicotianas, calendars, roses and zinnias.

Items Used

Lavinia Stamps; Zen Flower 2, Poppy Pods and foliage from the magazine freebie

Distress Inks in Faded Jeans, Tumbled Glass, Lilac Shades, Victorian Velvet, Wild Honey and Pine Needles.

Piece of white card about 14cm square + smooth white card for stamping flowers on.

Pro-Markers in Lipstick Red, Pumpkin and Lime Zest.

Tim Holtz embossing folder from Pattern and Stitches A2 set

Clarity Honeycomb Stencil

Perfect Pearls in bisque

Brilliance ink in Pearlescent Thyme

Lattice die from Spellbinders

Stickles in Crystal

Length of fuchsia coloured string

Black Archival ink pad

Versa-mark ink pad

Clear and white Embossing Powder

To begin with I stamped various flowers in black ink onto white card and then embossed with the clear powder and also versa-mark ink and white embossing powder. These were then coloured in using the pro-markers and cut out. The buds were formed by using 5 petals from a flower, curling them and then sticking the tips of the petals with some pva glue. I stuck petals 1, 3 and 5 together first and the brought in petals 2 and 4, so as to form a layer.

The main flowers were made of 2 layers glued together and a piece of Craftwork Cards candi used for the centre.

I then coloured the background card using the distress inks and a brush. Once happy with the tones I added subtle areas of matching colour ink using the honeycomb stencil and a sponge.

Once dry I embossed 3 sides with the stitch embossing folder.

Next I stamped the flower stems by inking the the poppy pods stamp but not inking the actual seed head. For this I used the pine needles ink.

Then the leaves were added using the pearlescent thyme ink which gives a slight shimmer.

The white lattice die cut was then stuck to the bottom of the card and trimmed to size. The pink string was then stuck to the back and knotted at the front.

Before attaching this to the card blank I added a very small amount of corresponding coloured ink to the edges of the card just to tie it all in.

The 2 lower flowers were attached first and the the 3rd centre one, next the 2 buds/ seed heads depending how you look at them. Next I added the dots of perfect pearls and then added a smidging of the stickles to the 2 outer petals of the buds.

I would like to enter this for Lavinia Stamps monthly Challenge titled 'Summer Colours'.

Well I hope the sun pops its little head out for us all over the weekend, Have a good one whatever you may be doing and if its raining there's always ink to play with !!

If you have time to leave a comment at the bottom of the page I would appreciate hearing what you think.

Take Care and thanks as always for stopping by Jane  x