Garden in Bloom

Hello, Crafters.

What a lovely hot and sunny Bank Holiday weekend it's been 

here in the UK! I'd love the weather to stay like this right through

 to October - fat chance of that in the UK but I'm the 

permanent optimist! LOL! 

Today's card showcases the Garden In Bloom Stamp Set that 

will be retiring on 31st May 2018. It's a two-step stamp set, with a 

few of the stamps being three-steps. I already had two Post It Note 

masks in the stamp case which I'd saved from a previous project! I

 stamped the first flower onto a layer of Whisper White Cardstock (CS)

 using Basic Grey Archival Ink. 

I positioned the flower in the bottom left-hand corner allowing the 

tips of two petals to go over the edge. I covered this image with 

one of the masks and stamped two more flowers, one above and one 

by the right-hand side of the first flower. I repeated the process using

 the second step stamp, with soon-to-be-retired Pink Pirouette Ink, and

 then a third time with the third step stamp!

 I would have saved myself a lot of fiddling about if I had done the

 three steps for the first stamp one after the other, and repeated that 

process, but my way allowed me to check at each stage whether I

 wanted to use two- or three-step stamping.

 For the leaves, I covered the two outside flowers with masks, 

and did all three steps of stamping, using Basic Grey Archival

 Ink first, and then Emerald Envy Ink for the second and third steps.

 For the first step in Emerald Envy I stamped off once.

 I remember from using this stamp set previously, that I prefer 

to stamp the bee with Archival Ink, and then colouring the body

 using Marker Pens. For today's card I used Crushed Curry, which

 I also used for the flower centres. 

The sentiment I chose is from the Picture Perfect Birthday Stamp 

Set which isn't retiring, which I'm pleased about because it has some

great sentiments, not least Treat Yourself which is ideal if you're 

giving someone a gift card, money or a cheque! 

Although it's not visible in the photographs, I painted the bees' wings 

using my Clear Wink of Stella Glitter Pen. To decorate the inside of 

my card, I stamped one flower in the bottom right hand corner of

 the top Whisper White CS layer, and then coloured it using the

 same process I'd used for the front of my card.

   My final touch was to add some Pool Party self-adhesive sequins to

 the front of the card, which I finished off by popping a small Basic 

Pearl inside the centre. Although I don't normally like rough drawn

 outline images, I like the way these images look once they've been 

painted according to the way they were designed to be painted 

i.e. by two- or three-step stamping!

I hope you like today's very summery card! That's it from me, until 

tomorrow, happy crafting.

JanB.