Hi crafty friends.

I seriously cannot get enough of the Ella’s Garden Rose Bouquet stamps. I’ve made yet another set of cards with this stamp to share with you today. Somebody may have to step in and stop me if this goes on much longer!

I think these would make a great little gift for a friend, as they all colour coordinate and look like a set.

For the first card, I stamped the image onto watercolour paper, and heat embossed it in white. Then I used Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers to do the watercolouring. I coloured in layers, adding more colour to the corners and folds of the flowers with each layer and blending out with water on a small brush.

The black stripy paper is actually made with a striped stamp from the Mixed media 3 stamp set. I stamped this in Versafine ink in Onyx Black. This ink gives such a beautiful crisp black outline.

For the next card, I used the same Mixed Media stripe stamp to create the background, which is really the main feature of this card. I first blended Distress Oxide Inks onto a piece of watercolour paper. I then stamped the stripes using the clear, sticky Versamark Ink, and embossed them in clear embossing powder. I moved the stamp along in my MISTI stamping tool, so that I could keep the stripes parallel. This is a lovely forgiving set of stripes because they are a loose style so if the distances moved a little, it didn’t show. Next, I sprayed the paper with water from a small spray bottle, and then soaked up the now pink water with a paper towel. This lightened the background considerably, except where the embossing had trapped the original vibrant colours, giving great contrast to the stripes.

I stamped the flower image in Versafine ink, and again heat embossed it with clear powder. There are two ways to get black heat embossed images. You can stamp in clear (or black) and use black embossing powder, or stamp in black and use clear powder. I am NOT GOOD at keeping the powder onto images, so I always use clear powder if I have the option, because a little stray powder will not show up in the same way as black will. You could always colour the image if you wanted to, but I didn’t want to detract from the background and make the card too busy.

Finally, if you are a regular reader of my blog, you’ll know what’s coming next – championing the smaller images in the set. This stamp set has both filled in and outline smaller images and I’ve used the filled in stamps today. I used the same technique on this card as I did with the stripes in the previous card, Ink blending, using clear embossing powder and spraying with water. It’s important to use watercolour paper for this technique so that it stands up to all the water.

Once I had my background panel, I used three stitched rectangle dies taped together to cut the frame and internal rectangle. You can keep the remaining frame piece for another card, if it’s straight – mine wasn’t!

The Hello die with its matching frame stand out beautifully, and I placed them at the bottom corner, across the gap in the frame. I think they would also look nice right in the middle as the central feature, but for today, I was highlighting the background.

I hope you’re still enjoying this stamp set as much as I am, and are inspired to get crafty. If you’d like to see more inspiration, you can visit my Instagram feed here.

Until next time, may your days be full of flowers.

Blessings,

Donna