Hello there everybody! I hope you all have been doing well and staying warm wherever you are! It has been right chilly here and I must say, we are not used to single digits! My poor Camellias....they were about to bloom and now all of the leaves are curled up and the buds are frozen. I hope once this cold snap passes some of the blooms will recover, but I don't know.....we'll just have to see. Have you been keeping up with all of the fabulousness going on over at Power Poppy? Those amazing Power Poppy Instant Gardeners have been at it again and heralded in one of the most beautiful digis evah....French Lilac. I could not wait to get this one printed up and colored!
Now I ask you, have you ever seen a prettier lilac image? Me either. ;) That Marcella definitely knows her blooms, doesn't she? Lilacs come in a variety of colors so you could use this image again and again with several different color schemes! Let me show you what I did using this amazing image.....
I chose to go with the more traditional lilac colors and stayed mostly in the violet family of Copics. When I think of lilacs, I think of an abundance of blooms and that heavenly scent everywhere. I wanted my card to be chock full of blooms so I added just a few extra to anchor my image. One might be surprised exactly how many of these little blooms it takes to fill the bottom left corner of an A2-ish sized card but I think it was totally worth it to make it feel like a huge bouquet of lilacs. I crumpled my papers before I used my Martha Stewart 3 in 1 Hydrangea punch and then used a stylus on them to really rough them up. Next, I sponged on a little PTI Fresh Snow ink and I think was able to pass these off as lilac blooms.....don't you? ;) After I colored my image, I sponged on some Ranger Distress Ink in Weathered Wood and spritzed some ink from markers around the blooms. Then, I got ready to stamp my sentiment from Power Poppy's Farmer's Market set.
Now here is where it gets interesting and it turns out I have a little survival tip for you. I have tried to make it a practice to stamp my sentiment before I color my image because...well, bad things can happen if you don't (ask me how I know this). I must not have been in my right mind, because I went ahead and colored up my image and then realized I hadn't put the sentiment on there....drat. Sooo, I practiced stamping the sentiment more times than I care to admit here to make sure all would go well and on every one of the practice images it went beautifully. So, I felt pretty confident going in that all would be ok.....and then......yep, it happened. I stamped that sentiment, pulled up the stamp and from "Sweet" all the way to "Brighten" there was a stray black line, in what later was to be determined as a Miniature Longhaired Dachshund hair on my stamp (again, ask me how I know this...) I was mortified. I was just about to ditch the image and color up another one when I spied my Stampin' Up! Stampin White Chalk Marker. I thought, what the heck....so I dabbed it on the stray black Versafine ink line and O.M.Gosh.....it worked! The photo below has not been touched up....this is how well that marker covered up my ooops. Pretty cool, eh? Tragic situation averted.....
I used my Krylon Silver Leafing pen for this image and popped it up on foam dimensionals so my gazillion punched lilac blooms could spill out around it. The card itself is some very simple layers of patterned papers, card stock, and a bit of stitching....but I think that this card would still count as reasonably flat for mailing! :) Oh, I did use some Tsukineko Shimmer Mist on the punched lilac blooms and then my Atyou Spica clear glitter pen for the centers of the colored blooms. So there you have it, a fabulous French Lilac digital image, a semi flat card for mailing, a new anecdote for your card emergency tool box, and one very relieved card maker since every thing worked out ok....lol. I sure have enjoyed your visit here today and I hope you will be able to pay all of my sweet and uber talented Bloom Brigade sisters a visit.....they have lots of lilac goodness just waiting for you to see! Make sure you leave them a little love, while you're there, k? I hope you have a wonderful rest of the week and weekend and until next time....take care! :)
Cindy Lawrence
Dawn Burnworth
Julie Koerber
Kathy Jones
Katie Sims <------You are here
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker
~Katie
Supplies not listed above: Paper: Naturals White, colored card stocks, and striped patterned paper from Stampin' Up!. Classic White card stock from Flourishes, Music patterned paper from The Paper Studio; Dies: Spellbinders' A2 Matting Basics sets A & B, Grand Scalloped Rectangles, Papertrey Ink's linen impression plate; Ink: Tsukineko's Versafine ink in Onyx Black, Stampin' Up! markers in Sahara Sand, Basic Gray and Concord Crush and these Copic colors: G40, G82, G85, G99, YG91, V0000, V01, V04, V05, V09, V12, V15, V17, BV01, BV02, and C5.
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