Hello: Stamped flowers with stencilling

I’ve been meaning to join in with the Seven Hills Crafts monthly challenge for a while and this month I actually managed to create something… only just in time though… For a change, I left my Copic markers on the side and went back to basics with some stencilling and stamping.

How:

I started by creating the stencilled background; this stencil has a few fiddly bits so I thought I’d try giving it a quick blast with some repositionable spray glue to keep it in place. I pressed it against some scrap paper first, just to make sure it didn’t stick too well — I didn’t want to leave glue on my finished piece or tear any of the surface of the card off when I removed the stencil.

I blended some blues and grey Distress inks through the stencil. I liked the effect, but it was missing something. I have a nice deep teal spray which matched the colour theme perfectly, so I put some protective sheet on the floor, laid the card down and sprayed it from quite a height to give a fine spray.

When it was dry I trimmed it to size, mounted it on a top-folding teal card base and added a sparkly black strip below it.

The flowers and leaves were stamped with dye inks and fussy cut out. Again, something was missing, so I added some shading with coloured pencil. I arranged the leaves and flowers on some black card and drew around them with a white pen, leaving a margin. I fussy cut that out, glued the leaves down flat and popped the flowers up with some foam tape.

When I held the finished arrangement over the background I wasn’t completely happy with the contrast between the background and the white border around the stamped elements, so I shaded it with some blue pencil. I used some thin foam tape to mount it in place.

The sentiment was die cut, coated with clear sparkle pen and glossy accents, and added to the card once it was dry.

Still something missing… I grabbed my black enamel accents (can’t remember the last time I used that) and added some dots over the stamping in the middle of the flowers, using a small embossing stylus for more precise control. The black dots around the flowers were done straight from the bottle.

Of course, I couldn’t stop there, so I checked my stash to seen if there was anything that would match the colour scheme. I don’t have any liquid accents or pearls in blue, but I did find some platinum, which is almost grey (it isn’t really, but it does go well with everything else), and added a few more small dots on the largest flower and the background.

Finally finished and finally happy with it.

Challenges:

Seven Hills Crafts April 2016 Colour Challenge – I chose the third palette.

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Lil Inker – fresh cut flowers
• dies:
  Mama Elephant – hello script
• stencils:
  Hero Arts – flourish
• inks:
  Distress ink pads – broken china, tumbled glass, hickory smoke
  Lawn Fawn – freshly cut grass, wild rose, black licorice
• colour:
  Color Bloom spray – deep teal
• embellishments:
  Ranger – enamel accents – black
  Ranger – liquid pearls – platinum
  Spectrum Noir sparkle pen – crystal clear
  Ranger – glossy accents
  Papermania – glitterations – blackz borders
• paper and card:
  Make It Color 250gsm
  Strathmore Bristol 300
  Papermill Direct – plain – teal
  scraps of black card