Truly Great Friends

To create this card, I adhered the flowers and leaves to the very bottom of my 6" x 4" tent fold card blank, taking care to position the pieces almost to the edges on both sides. With a pair of sharp scissors, I then fussy cut around the bottom section of the card front, leaving about 1/8" as a little border. Red card stock glued on the inside panel gives a fabulous contrast to the image.

Stamps:
Painted Blooms

Poppy Fields of Home

Karin has chosen to use the poppies from the new Painted Blooms digital stamp set for the collection of cards she's sharing with us today. The poppies hold special meaning for Karin because she has fond childhood memories of Remembrance Day services in Ypres, the city of her birth, where cascades of poppies were released from the top of the Menin Gate to the moving tune of The Last Post.

Karin used Derwent Coloursoft pencils to colour each of her cards and she kindly included two colouring guides for those who are curious about the exact colours she chose - thanks Karin!

Karin's Blog

Roses with Embossing

I was really inspired by the way Jackie used the new Painted Blooms set in her recent projects, creating fabulous backgrounds and building up dimension with layered images. I decided to have a go myself and printed out the single rose three times at different sizes and with one of the images flipped so they wouldn't all look exactly the same. About 15 minutes of fussy cutting later and I had all the elements ready for my layered card.

Stamps:
Painted Blooms

Blooming Beautiful - with Jackie

I'm so thrilled to share these cards with you today, not only are they gorgeous to look at, but there's some fantastic little ideas lurking just under the surface that you might not notice until I point them out. Get set for some serious inspiration courtesy of the lovely Jackie Trinder!

Jackie has actually cut out the pre-coloured leaves from the Painted Blooms set and adhered one end flat to the surface of the card and the other popped up. It adds lots of dimension and tricks the eye into thinking that the leaves are growing out from behind each blossom.

Look really closely at the patterned papers Jackie has used for her cards... notice anything?

Yep, that's right! She has created her own patterned paper by shrinking and repeating the flower images from the set. What an awesome way of ensuring the perfect combination of paper and focal image!

For more inspiration visit:
Jackie's Blog

Adding Penwork

Although the Painted Blooms set does contain bonus coloured images with a dark outline, sometimes it's just fun to have a little play to see what happens. Inking or doodling is a technique that you can use on any image to add a little oomph!

I've printed one of the pre-coloured images from the set onto a piece of smooth, white card stock. I'm not going to worry about following the shapes exactly, which would give a fairly rigid feel to the image, instead, I'm going to add short, curved lines that loosely follow the shapes within the image.

If you look closely at the card you can see that I also added some grey shadows to the right and bottom of each leaf and flower. This just gives the image a little more weight and substance.

Stamps:
Painted Blooms

digital stamps

Painted Blooms Card

Adding lots of layers to a card can sometimes add too much bulk, which can be problematic if you want to send your card through the post. One way of reducing the amount of card stock or paper that you're using on a project is to cut mats from the centre of your layers. For this card, I've taken circles from the centre of both the red and blue piece of card stock and used them to mat my image. It reduces the bulk in the centre and saves on card stock too!

I started by die cutting circles from the centre of each piece of card stock. The red circle has a larger diameter than the blue circle so that they can be layered together.

Secure the red piece to your card base, then simply build up the layers making sure you cover each cut as you go. This technique will work with squares, rectangles and most other standard shapes. You might have a little trouble with fancier shapes so it's best to try them out before you begin cutting. Just lay the dies on top of each other to give you an idea of how the cuts will look.

Stamps:
Painted Blooms

digital stamps

July New Releases

We have two fabulous digital releases for you this month - The Button Collector and Painted Blooms. 

Both sets are now available for purchase in our online store.

Painted Blooms

digital stamp set

Available in Store Now

The Button Collector

digital stamp set

Available in Store Now