Erica on the blog today!

Hi there!

I'm back with another card using the Splendid Roses stamp set. Yep, just one card today but it's a big one. Well, not size wise actually. Time consuming more like it but the result were worth every second spent on it and I hope you agree.

I had an idea to make a tear drop bouquet (the florist in me is at work again.. ) and I knew it would involve some masking. I didn't realise exactly how much masking it would take to get the look I wanted until I was cutting up my forth mask! And the fourth one wasn't even my last one. Oh boy, right?? The consolation is that the masks will last for more projects and that will save time next time. To make sure I don't loose them, I tend to store them in the pocket that holds the stamp set they belong to.

To go back to the beginning, I started out with a stitched rectangle piece of Neenah paper as I wanted to do some copic colouring today. I always use Lawn Fawn dies for A2 sized cards as the stitched edges gives such a lovely finish to even the simplest of designs. I stamped the first image slightly off-centre to make sure I had enough space for the rest of the roses and leaves. The picture I had in my head was actually slightly different from the one I ended up with but unless I had told you that you would have been none the wiser, right?

The first mask, which I had already stamped and cut out, went over the image and then I repositioned the stamp. I wanted most of the biggest roses to be at the top of the bouquet and then the smaller ones, buds and leaves would create the tear drop shape I was after. The second mask went on and I repositioned the stamp again, and then all that happened again and again... Yeah, this went on for a while and in between I also had to cut up more masks as the bouquet grew.

Once I was finally done stamping, I was a bit intimidated to start colouring. What if I mess it up and all that work was for nothing?? Gah! Self doubt plagues me way more than I like to admit but I decided to just dive in the deep end and go for it. Whilst eating some chocolate for comfort. Yeah, I am one of those stress eaters and carrots will not do. 

Chocolate in one hand and copics in another, I went bold with my colour choices: Fuchsia/RV09, Red Violet/RV19, Raspberry/RV66 and Peony/RV69. I didn't want a 'too blended' look so just flicked the colours from the centre of the roses outwards. Much like you see roses look naturally. For the buds I went much lighter (Cotton Candy/RV52, Rose Pink/R81 and Rose Mist/R83) to make sure they didn't disappear in the fuchsia fest. 

For the leaves I used so many different greens I honestly can't remember which ones I did or didn't use. Memo to self: must start making a colour reference chart for images I colour so I can reproduce it if I want to or you know, remember which colours I used when writing a blog post for instance. Now, that would be handy, wouldn't it??

When I thought I was done, I sat back to look at the image but thought it looked a bit strange with all the white spaces between the leaves. This I again blame on my inner florist, you would have no white empty spaces in an actual bouquet so the only option was to colour those in too. While I was on a roll with the green, I added some between the roses at the top too because I thought that would look nice and I think it ended up quite lovely. Then an idea came to me: let's add dots to the green spaces. So I did that too. Annnnnnd that's when I spotted it: one of my fuchsia copics had dripped and splattered! *Here you can picture an absolutely horrified face and add in a 'nooooo' in slow motion* I was so cross!! Meh, meh, meh!!!

After having had a bit of a tantrum about it which included eating more chocolate, it was time to put the big girl panties back on and come up with a solution. It ended up being quite a simple one. I went with more dots all around the bouquet to cover up the original splatter, but it didn't look quite right using just one colour (It was naturally the darkest one too of course) so I kinda went to town with the colours I had used for the big roses. I must admit that I wouldn't have gone down this route if that one marker hadn't splattered but now I'm actually glad it did as I like it a lot better than without the dots. How about that, huh? Sometimes a crafty accident can make you look at a project with new eyes and you come up with a brand new, different idea. I'm not saying it works every time but boy, am I glad it did for this card.

The card needed a sentiment but now I was balking at the idea of covering up all that colouring I had done so how get around that? Vellum is almost always the answer to this question and this case was not an exception. I cut a thin strip off and heat embossed the 'Wishing you a sweet birthday' sentiment that comes with the stamp set on it with white embossing powder. The vellum strip was placed right across the widest part of the bouquet and adhered to the back with some double sided tape. Once secure, the whole panel was glued onto a card base and that's it, good
folks.

 

 Masking is such a fun technique and goes back to what I was saying in my first post about stretching stamps. By masking off a part or building up a stamp, you get so many more options from just one single stamp. How fun is that? In case it wasn't obvious, I think it' super fun and clever! I hope this blog post has inspired you to look at your stamps and see more than just the original imag

Right, probably time to sign off before I really get going about masking and stretching. Which sounds a bit weird put together in one sentence like that and kind of proves my point about it being time to say bye for now..

Happy crafting everyone and see you soon again,

Erica