Watermelon Flowers

Hello, Crafters.

I lost most of my morning yesterday while hubby was dealing with my web host, trying to sort out why they were bouncing so many of my emails! Unfortunately, part of the problem is still there despite being reassured that everything has been sorted. I'm getting frustrated because I still have quite a lot of emails I need to resend! I am counting my blessings that hubby is at home this week to deal with this for me!

I had a really successful afternoon in my studio yesterday. I started with a mini-spring clean and then went on to make another slider card using the Shooting Star Stamp Set (page 91) and the Sliding Star Framelits Dies (page 192). They're available as a bundle so you can save 10% - the details are on page 91. If this bundle isn't on your wishlist, it may be once you see the video I made yesterday! I'll be posting it on Wednesday.

I made today's card using the Penned & Painted Stamp Set with Watermelon Wonder and Old Olive Ink. I started with a card base of Whisper White Cardstock followed by a layer of Watermelon Wonder and a top layer of Whisper White.

The flowers and leaves are three step stamping, which I find easiest if I start with the darker stamp and working my way lighter.

To stamp the first outline flower, I inked up with Watermelon Wonder and stamped the flower close to the top right hand corner. I repeated this for the second flower and positioned it close to the bottom left hand corner. For the third flower, I eyeballed what I considered to be the centre between the first two images and stamped. 

For the second image, I stamped off once with a fair amount of pressure, but not hard, and stamped on top of the first outline image. I repeated this process for the other two images. 

For the third step, I inked the stamp and stamped off very, very lightly and then stamped onto each image.

To colour the centre of the flowers, I inked the single solid circle stamp, stamped off lightly and then stamped in the centre of each flower. I painted the centre of each flower using the Clear Wink of Stella Glitter Pen spreading out the colour to fill the remaining white areas.

I followed the same stamping off process for the leaves using Old Olive Ink. I stamped the outline stamp on the top flower first and worked my way down choosing a different position for each set of leaves.

Normally I would have had to use this card horizontally but because we now have a set of vertical stamps, I was able to keep with a vertical card. The Vertical Greetings Stamp Set is available as wood-mount or clear-mount, so I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to make sure I stamped the sentiment in a straight line.

I love having bees or ladybirds on my flower cards and this stamp set comes with a ladybird, so I stamped three of them using Archival Basic Black Ink. To colour the body, I used the single solid circle stamp, and Watermelon Wonder Ink, which fitted beautifully.  I'm really pleased with how this card turned out!

I'm off to work now, so until tomorrow, happy crafting,

JanB.