Poppies in Red

Welcome, welcome! Beautiful Blossoms Challenge for September, yah! Look at this inspiration photo!!!:

Poppies everywhere in all different colors - how fun! Recently I was placing an order at Taylored Expressions and I saw they had a free gift with $100 purchase - layered poppy stencils called Poppy Fields. Just loved it! Sad to say that particular gift with purchase is over, but Taylored Expressions has one every month. I purchase frequently from TE for I love their Watercolor 118 lb. Paper and all their 100 lb. cardstock in a great range of color (my preferred weight for card stock - not too light and not so heavy it is hard to bend). TE also loves a good punny sentiment and lots of good ones can be found on their website.

I started with 6" X 6" piece of Bristol Smooth Paper which makes ink blending a breeze. The layering stencil is really easy and I used Altenew's Crimson & Velvet Fresh Dye Inks for the poppies, The Stamp Market, Leafy and Forest for the stems and buds and Hero Arts Intensified Black for the poppy centers.

These cards were inspired by a stamp set I just purchased - My Favorite Things Wavy Greetings. It seems to be retired, but must have been one of the stamps "From the Vault" they bring back from time to time. Anyway, they are curved sentiments, so I pulled a border die from my stash, Pretty Pink Posh Stitched Borders 1 and cut a nice curve with a stitch line about 2" from the bottom.

I stamped "Thanks So Much" with my favorite dark dark black ink, Altenew's Obsidian Black Pigment Ink (you need to let it dry a bit, but you can also use clear embossing powder over it and emboss). For this card, I also cut under the sentiment with the same Stitched Borders 1 die. Then a pasted the cut off poppies onto the inside of the card.

The Happy Birthday sentiment came from Simon Says Stamp Black Eyed Susan stamp and die set. For this card the cut off piece of the poppy paper was glued to the front card panel.

Thank you for stopping by and coming on this journey with me for the Beautiful Blossoms Challenge. Come join us - we'd love to see you!

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Fall Basket

Hi all! It's almost Fall and I couldn't resist a colorful basket of fall goodies on a cool stencil for the Happy Little Stampers Stencil Challenge for September 2023.

To begin, I used 3 large sheets of watercolor paper, brush with water each sheet and then dropped in watercolor: one in oranges and yellows, one in purples (1/2) and reds (1/2) and the third in greens, browns and gold. I let dry overnight.

Using almost all the dies from the Pretty Pink Posh Fall Basket Dies I die cut them in the appropriate watercolored paper. Really fun to put the basket together.

The background is a stencil from Stampers Anonymous, Tim Holtz, THS032 Flourish Layering Stencil. I used oranges to ink blend through the stencil. Such movement!

Below is my favorite shot of the card. I wish I could pick up the sparkle in the photos.

Here's a look at the inside:

Thanks for stopping by, grab a stencil and come play along! We'd love to see your work!!!

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

SheepSki Designs for Paper Funday

Welcome my friends to September 2023 Challenge for the Paper Funday.  I choose SheepSki Designs' Forget Me Knot Digital Image. I loved it for its simplicity.

The digital image was printed onto Taylored Expressions 118 lb. Watercolor Paper on the smooth side with a digital printer. Nice heavyweight paper and pure white.

I wanted to make 2 cards - One in all blues and one with rainbow colors. I used 3 watercolors set interchangeably: Altenew's 36 pan watercolor set, The Stamp Market Color-Crush Watercolor Palette and for shine - Fine Tec Iridescent Colours.

I tried to pick up the watercolor shine under the floral images, but it's not really coming out well. Subtle greyish-green.

Here's the rainbow card and used my favorite blue from The Stamp Market set for the background. Here is the set with all the lovely colors!

Glad you could join me today and thank you, as always to our generous sponsors, SheepSki Designs and Fred She Said. Let's see what you got!

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.