Guest Designer Heidi

Hi everyone! I’m very excited to be sharing a card with you today that I made as a guest designer for Kennedy Grace Creations

One day I was surfing the web for inspiration and I came across a gorgeous card and the maker used one of the stamp sets from Kennedy Grace Creations. I wanted to try them out myself and here we are. This company is shipping internationally, all you have to do is email Michelle, the owner of Kennedy Grace Creations, and she will get back to you with how much shipping is (I live in the Netherlands and the shipping costs were very reasonable).

Today I will show you how to make this card that features one of the flowers from the “Grace’s little Note”stamp set and a sentiment from the “Time to Blossom”stamp set, both from Kennedy Grace Creations.

So, let’s get started! I first stamped one of the flowers from the “Grace’s little Note” stamp set  five times with Versafine “Onyx Black”ink on Strathmore Bristol Smooth Surface paper (I used my MISTI so I was able to stamp each image several times over to get nice crisp lines). Then I heat embossed with clear embossing powder (this makes the lines stay crisp even if I put water on the image). Then I coloured the image with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers and my Pentel Aquabrush: I put down about 3 layers of each colour, starting from the heart of the flower and fading out, by adding more water, towards the edges. Since I wanted to create a rainbow look for this card I used a different colour for each flower (I figured I had room for five flowers on this card so I skipped the blue and the green from the rainbow, also because I could use the green colour from the rainbow in the greenery and the blue colour in the background: so all the colours of the rainbow are still incorporated in this card).

I used the following Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers:

For the red flower I used: Geranium Red;

For the orange flower I used: Orange;

For the yellow flower I used: Yellow;

For the indigo flower I used: Violet;

And for the violet flower I used: Purple.

For the greenery I used on some flowers the combination: May Green and Deep Green, and on others the combination Mid Green and Olive Green.

For the flower hearts I used: Yellow on some and Mid Brown on the others.

Around each flower I used: Light Blue.

You can’t really see it in the pictures but in real life the flower petals are more shiny because I put a little “Clear” Wink of Stella in the darkest area of the flowers, around the flowers hearts and I also used some white Gelly Roll Pen to create a bit more interest in the flowers. After the colouring was dry I fussy cut all the flowers out by hand with my Fiskars scissors and I used a craft knife to cut away the inside parts that I didn’t wanted to show.

Next it was time to create the rest of the card: I started by die cutting a white panel with a stitched line around the edges with one of my stitched rectangle Crea-Nest-Lies XXL dies from some white card stock. I knew that I didn’t have a lot of room for my sentiment (I used one of the sentiments from the“Time to Blossom”stamp set) so I stamped that first with the same black ink that I used for the flowers and then used some Distress Ink in the colour “Tumbled Glass”around the edges of this panel and also pulling the blue inwards, with a foam tool, from the right hand side fading to nothing about half way. It’s very subtle but is makes a great difference because it pulls the blue (Zig marker) that I used around the edges of the flowers together with the blue background (Tumbles Glass ink). Sometimes you want to create more contrast and sometimes you just want to let everything melt together, and that time was now! I think because the flowers are so bright the rest of the card has to tie everything together.

I found some darker blue card stock in my stash from which I die cut an slightly bigger rectangle using a die from another Crea-Nest-Lies XXL die set and I glued both panels together with liquid glue. Then I foam taped these panels to a dark kraft coloured card base with one millimetre thick foam tape. I used some Distress Ink in the colour “Vintage Photo”around the edge of the card base to give it a more finished look.

And then it’s time to arrange the flowers on the right hand side of the card in rainbow order. They are sticking out a little from the right hand side of the card so you have to make sure that the finished card still fits in the envelope (I used a slightly bigger envelope then I would normally do). When I was sure where I wanted to put each flower I glued them down with Ranger Medium Matte, letting each flower overlap the next one slightly.

To finish this card I glued on some “Clear Droplets” from Pretty Pink Posh, to attract more attention to the sentiment, and that’s it for today!

I just love this flower stamp, it's so elegant and yet so easy to colour, even if you have not much experience you can turn this image into a great eye catcher for your cards!