Bloomin’ Flowers

Hi all. I’m back again today to invite you to come play in a challenge I am hosting over at The Sisterhood of Crafters challenge blog. For this challenge, I decided to choose the theme “Bloomin’ Flowers” as I have fallen in love with flowers since I started card making and painting. So if you’re like me and love flowers too, I hope to see you link up all your projects with flowers there! You have till Sunday September 2nd 8pm EST.

I took a course recently at Altenew Academy, as part of my Altenew Educator Certification Program, called “Beautiful Details” and its all about how we can go outside the box and add those little details that make our card stand out from the norm. I’ve also been wondering lately, what type of painter I would like to be and maybe go back to my roots (or rather my grandparents) and give Chinese painting  a try.

So with this card I tried to emulate the style of the Chinese traditional painters by using my stamps from Clearly Besotted in a different way and incorporating tips I learnt from the course. The “Calming Carnations” stamp set consists of 2 layered stamps and I first took the full carnations stamp and coloured it with my light grey  Zig clean color real brush, spritz it VERY slightly with water and stamped it. I then did the same thing twice more but each time with a darker colour. The darker flower at the front was stamped after I stamped the two behind.

Yes it looks awful at this stage doesn’t it! Luckily I had a clear picture in my mind of what I wanted to do, if not I would have given up at this point! I stamped the little buds in pink and started doodling on my flowers with my Sakura Koi grey colouring Brush pens which I just got. I’m not a natural at doodling but afew reference pics from internet on Chinese paintings helped alot. At this point I felt the flowers were all concentrated too low on the card, so I added two lilies from the same stamp set, but this time using only the detailed part of the stamp and then doodled in.

I added a frame as I still felt it was too flat (can you tell I’m not comfortable with “free-styling”) by cutting 2 rectangle frames using Sizzix stacked rectangle dies. I propped the frame on double sided foam and finished by writing in the sentiment in Chinese, which means “May all your wishes comes true” as I’m gave this card to a friend for her birthday.

Well I hope you liked my card, I would love to know what you think. Do pop on over to “The Sisterhood of Crafters” challenge blog and see what my “sistahs” there have created just to inspire you to join in the fun and leave them some love too.

Thanks for stopping by and Have a Great Day!

I’m sharing this with:

Stamping Sensations – Use your current favourite stamp. My current, past and future favourite stamp will always be a flower one!

Crafty Creations – Anything Goes

Creative Moments – Anything Goes without the optional twist of music

Seize the Birthday – Anything Goes