Hello crafty friends. Yes, I’m still alive!!! It’s been a hectic month- sitting an exam, playing and speaking (in Japanese!) in several Christmas concerts, and getting ready to move countries. It’s a lot to keep in your head, so I’ve been just dealing with each day as it comes. The end result is something that is getting most things done, all very last minute! Anyway, here’s a card for you. I’ve been colouring flowers again!

I also have a video, and I hope you enjoy watching the making process.

I stamped the floral image from Paper Rose Studio‘s Brooke’s Bouquet twice in Memento Tuxedo Black ink – once onto the card base, and once onto some post-it tape to use as a mask. It’s often easier to cut a mask than to cut the image out to put it above. You can see on the video that I ignored some pieces entirely when cutting my mask, and that I chopped some pieces off and made separate masks. This saves a lot of fiddly cutting.

Once the mask(s) were cut, I laid them over the image, and did two things. First, I stamped with pale ink and a text background. In this case I used Paper Rose Studio’s Text Background stamp and Altenew’s Misty Morning Ink . Then I used the same colour ink and blended off the edge of my mask to give a shadow to the image. It was at this point that I regretted my decision to just restamp my mask with the leftover Memento Ink. That ink is great for Copics, which I used, but it smudges with water based inks. In this case, I think I got away with it because my ink was quite grey, but for another ink, I’d definitely clean the stamp off and go back with a different ink like Versafine Onyx Black, that won’t smudge, or the same colour that I wanted to blend.

I coloured the card with Copic markers, and just a few coloured pencils for some of the tiny berries and buds. (The video shows this) I then added a darker border behind my panel, a sentiment (from the Rainbow Poppies Sentiments) layered up with some card and vellum, and some glitter enamel dots from Pink and Main from a set called Rainbows.

It was so lovely to get back into the craft room after a busy few weeks, and I hope to see you again soon, although, did I mention that I’m moving countries again in three weeks?! That should keep me out of mischief!

Until next time may you have a restful holidays, and have much joy in your life.

Blessings,

Donna