We've been home a week, and I've been immersed in an online class, "Beautiful Blooms," a botanical watercolor class hosted by Karen Abend and taught by Sarah Simon (also known as the Mint Gardener.) I have two of Sarah's books and have perused both of them, but found the prospect of working through them a bit intimidating. Being able to watch Sarah work in watercolor was so enlightening, and it was easy to see the simple things I need to improve. More water when working wet on wet, learning some excellent "recipes" for mixing colors, and how to work in layers on a piece are just a few of the things I've been working on. Her books are a lot more inviting now! I'll have more to share later.
But, finally, yesterday, I was able to get back to card making and my newly acquired Pinkfresh Studio goodies won back in November. I started off by stamping and stenciling the Folk Garden 2 set. It's a beautiful design that really appeals to me. The stamp creates a lovely background pattern, but what's especially wonderful is that an accompanying die will cut out (in one go) all the individual floral patterns. The open design could easily be colored with Copic markers or colored pencils, but the coloring stencil does it all with ink blending in six separate stencils --- a much quicker process. I ended up with three different cards from the session, with a few blooms left over.
I used two of the blooms on this card, arranging them at the bottom of an oval cut with Ellen Hutson's "Essential Ovals.
The sentiment is from another new Pinkfresh set, "Always Uplifting," and the Pinkfresh Jewels are in Sapphire, my favorite blue ink color from Pinkfresh, and one of the inks I used in stenciling the florals.
The next card is a CAS thank you note.
This time I added just one floral to a red panel die cut with The Greetery's "Crimped Frame."
The sentiment is also from Pinkfresh. I don't have many word dies with shadows, but I do love them. This one accompanies a stamp set "Sentiment Suite: Thank You."
Lastly, a birthday card with another die cut sentiment from the Pinkfresh "Happy Birthday Sentiments." Both this and the thank you set have been in my collection for awhile. Because they are a larger format, I often forget about them when I'm looking for sentiments for my cards.
This card had a previous iteration that I tore apart this morning after deciding it was just "too busy." I like this version much better.
It's always a bit nerve wracking to tear a card apart, but if I'm slow and steady, I can usually salvage the important elements. The only things that were trashed were a white panel and a blue card base. You can see I reversed that here.
I'm entering this one in two open challenges: Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes and Happy Little Stampers Dies: Anything Goes.
