Tonight I wanted to post this card because I wanted to take the opportunity to say Thank You to everyone who visits my blog!!! I love being able to share my creations with you and I appreciate how busy everyone is - so Thanks for stopping in and visiting with a friend...I hope that the time you spend with me each day is an inspiration and a little slice of much needed "ME TIME" which I know will be far and few between in the hectic days before Christmas. Now it occurred to me tonight - that those of you who are super organized...probably have all your Christmas cards made and are just finishing the last of your Christmas Shopping. And perhaps you might enjoy a non holiday post- and a card no less. I can't believe that it has been over a month since I have posted a card - I guess I got off on a serious paper crafting tangent...but as a designer sometimes I just have to go with the inspired flow when it hits.
I have always loved Rubber Stamp Tapestry Peg Stamps for their extraordinary versatility. If you aren't familiar with their line - their stamps are individual images on pegs...which means you design your image...How COOL is that!! This set - Pottery Garden comes with one traditional wooden stamp - which is the 5 terracotta pots and then it has 4 peg stamps - 2 small flowers and 2 leaf images. So you guessed it the possibilities are endless. To create this card I used tons of my favorite items - First I cut and dry embossed a large oval with my Spellbinders Nestabilities, using my largest scalloped oval nestabilites I cut out a scalloped oval using my nestabilites from Nellie's Garden Tiny Flower from Pebbles Inc. I also dry embossed this die cut. Next I used my Krylon Gold Leafing Pen to edge the scallop and set it aside to dry.
Using adirondack terracotta ink I stamped my pots (placing them low enough on my oval that I would still have room to stamp thank you.) Next I began adding in the large blue flowers using versacolor royal blue...stamp each peg image twice...this will give your arrangement depth. Next I stamped in small purple flowers using versacolor violet, then I added in the mini ferns using versacolor sage and then the smaller leaves in versacolor bamboo. The Thank you is from a clear word phrase set from Rubber Stamp Tapestry as well. I stamped Thank you with the royal blue and set my image aside to dry.
Now cut out a 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" piece of white cardstock and lightly trace the edge of your scallop die with a pencil. To make your floral frame - stamp your peg stamps in the same order as your pottery garden. Overlap your flowers and leaves into the pencil lines. ( Note that your scallop is not symmetric - so remember which direction you laid it in to trace it). After I completed my floral frame - I erased my pencil lines and trimmed my paper close to the edge of the floral frame. Since I felt the corners were too white I decided to adorn them using the Tonic Fleur II Corner Punch to decorate the corners of my image. Using my Gold Krylon Pen I colored the decorative corners - then I edged the paper with the same pen. To finish the gold I then carefully drew in the line around the decorative corner. For a little bling I added in light green rhinestones from Kaiser Krafts onto the decorative corners. The ribbon is from American Crafts - Olive #1. For the card base I cut out an A2 Card from Nellie's Garden Tiny Flower. If you have not been to the Rubber Stamp Tapestry website yet- they have 3 great video tutorials on how to use their stamps here is the link Rubber Stamp Tapestry.- go to the video and animated demos section of their site.
To finish the center image I used my prismacolor pencils to add in color under the pots so that they were not floating on my card- I used light cerulean blue,and true green. I also used a touch of poppy red in my pots to highlight them. Then I assembled my card and using my clear Spica Micro glass Flake pen I highlighted the flowers on the entire image and I also higlighted the word Thank You. I wish I could get a great photo of how spectacular the card looks with just a hint of clear spica!!
