Hello, Crafters! Spring is in the air in my southern part of the U.S. -- How about in yours? All the budding flowers and beautiful greenery helped to inspire today's card:
A new arrival in the store also contributed to my inspiration ... all of the beautiful new Springy colors of Distress Oxide Inks!!
(Please don't fret if these sell out of the store again quickly this week, as I hear another shipment is expected next week! Just click on the "Notify Me" button on the product page and you'll be emailed when they are back in stock.)
I adore shaped cards, so today I'm using the generously-sized Stitched Party Banners from Lawn Fawn, along with their Milo's ABC's alphabet stamp set to create my custom greeting:
The floral stamp set I used is Julie's Bohemian Garden:
To start, I die cut Ranger Watercolor paper with the largest Stitched Party Banner die, then positioned the die cut in my Misti. Then I started arranging the floral stamps on the paper:
Some of the stamps were easy enough to ink two colors at once -- I just placed a sticky note over the surrounding stamps:
One advantage of the Misti is that once a stamp (and in this case a particular color) has been inked and stamped, you can remove it and move on to inking the next stamp in a different color. This just makes it a little easier to mask off a few stamps that you don't want inked with that particular color. Once all the stamping was done, I went back with a waterbrush and lightly moved each color around within each flower, to lightly color them. In some spots, I added a little more ink by just picking up additional color directly from the ink pad with my waterbrush. Be sure to clean off your waterbrush between colors. Below, I've just started coloring the pink flowers on the left:
I love that the watered version of these Oxide inks is a lighter, softer hue than the original, just stamped, version! In particular, Spiced Marmalade watercolors more golden yellow than the vibrant orange it stamps and Fossilized Amber watercolors a pretty, soft yellow! For the flower stems, I just selectively inked the length of stem I wanted and carefully stamped around the existing flowers (because I don't like making and cutting masks!), but you could easily mask if you wanted.
Next, to make the shaped card base I die cut a folded Neenah Solar White (lighter 80 Lb. weight) card base with the largest Stitched Party Banners die. Just place the folded edge of the cardstock slightly below the cutting edge of the die, so the folded edge is not cut:
I could have made this card one layer by just die cutting folded watercolor paper in the beginning and using that to watercolor on. But since just about any watercolored paper will have some warping, I like to be able to put lots of adhesive on the back of a watercolor piece and adhere it to a card base, to help combat the warping. My favorite adhesive to use for this purpose is X-Press It High Tack Double-Sided 1/2-inch Tape.
Once the watercolor piece was adhered to the shaped card base, I tied Lawn Fawn's Black Hemp Cord through the die cut holes on the card front ...
... and accented four of the flowers/flower centers with Pretty Pink Posh 4 mm Clear Droplets, using Glossy Accents, as this is a nice strong clear adhesive:
To finish the card, I made a custom "HELLO" greeting using Lawn Fawn's Milo's ABC's and stamped it with Memento Tuxedo Black.
What dies do you have in your stash that could be used to make a shaped card? Look for larger (about 4 inches plus) dies. I like that this particular banner can be used nicely in either orientation!
