Rose Wonder Birthday Card

Hello, Crafters.

I had a great time yesterday, getting myself up to date with everything in my office, except for getting my accounts ready for my accountant, which was the object of the exercise!

Never mind! As long as I work as well as I did yesterday, they'll be ready sometime in the afternoon!

With all the fabulous new stamp sets I have from the Spring/Summer catalogue, I have no idea what made me pick up the Rose Wonder Stamp set today!

But I'm glad I did because I found this card very relaxing to make, with plenty of colouring as well as plenty of fussy cutting!

It's always at this time of the year that I concentrate on using the cardstock I have in the five in-colours that'll be retiring on 31st May 2018. 

They are Emerald Envy, Flirty Flamingo, Peekaboo Peach, Sweet Sugarplum and Dapper Denim. Not surprisingly, I'm already very low on my favourite which is Sweet Sugarplum. 

I'll also be sorry to see Emerald Envy go, but on the plus side, we'll have five new in-colours to replace these!

Originally, I wanted to use the large rose and leaves stamp, but decided it was just a bit too big.

I started to think about only using part of the image, and eventually my thoughts settled on the small rose and small branch which has a handful of leaves. 

I chose to use a Whisper White Cardstock (CS) card base, with a Flirty Flamingo CS layer and a top layer of Whisper White CS. 

Using Basic Black Archival Ink and Whisper White CS, I stamped five of the small roses and two branches.

I coloured the leaves using Emerald Envy, and Flirty Flamingo Marker Pens for the flowers.

I found it very relaxing fussy cutting the three roses, but a bit of a challenge to fussy cut the branches! 

I decided to cut all the white cardstock off around the leaves, but I left a slither of white along the actual branch.

My reasoning was that I'd be able to go over all the white areas that were visible, using my Basic Black Marker Pen. 

This worked well and I found it easy to twist the branches and leaves very gently so I could position them exactly where I wanted them on my card.

Using Flirty Flamingo CS, and the Happy Birthday Thinlits Die, I cut out the sentiment, and then painted it using my Clear Wink of Stella Glitter Pen. 

I arranged the elements onto the card base, and when I was happy, I adhered the sentiment first using Tombow. 

Next I adhered the two branches using Tombow, and then the three small roses using Mini Dimensionals. 

Something was missing! The sentiment looked wishy-washy next to the painted elements, and I needed something to help balance it! 

I stamped five more small roses and decided to paint the inner tiny flower only. 

After I had fussy cut them, I adhered them around the sentiment using Mini Dimesionals. 

I think it would have looked betted if I'd only used three of them, and tried removing one but it refused to budge, so I gave up  on that idea!

Inside the card I adhered a layer of Flrty Flaming CS, and a top layer of Whisper White CS. Using the Basic Black Archival Ink,  I stamped three small roses and coloured them the same way I did the three on the card front. 

The final touch was to add some small dots on the inside of the flowers inside the card and some Basic Pearls onto the flowers on the front of the card!

Apart from thinking it would have been better to use three tiny flowers instead of five, I'm quite pleased with my finished card!!

Until tomorrow,happy crafting.

JanB.