flowers are always a good idea

Happy Tuesday!

After the week I've had I decided I needed to make some simple, bright & cheerful cards!  I love the variety of styles represented by the creative girls on our Scrap N Stamp Design Team and I took my inspiration today from some of the cards I've seen Kia & Nancy E. making, though I definitely added my own twist. I wanted to focus on simple layers and white space, and I wanted to use my new Good Idea stamp set by Dina Wakley!  The large flower stamp in this set is really large, definitely sized more for art journaling than for cards, but I wasn't about to let that stop me... I played around with placement and stamped it overlapping the edges of a plain white card, then stamped it again on a die cut Stacked Deckle layer.  I used a grey archival ink called Watering Can for a somewhat softer look than black would have given.  I repeated the process twice, switching around where the card fold was since I wanted to try a couple different design options.


For my first card, I decided to trim the edge of the card to leave room to reveal a strip of washi tape on the inside of the card.  I used this as my color inspiration and decided to do some watercoloring with my Dina Wakley paints, placing tiny amounts of FuchsiaLapisEvergreen & Lemon on a palette.  I then painted my design with a wet paintbrush, which gave me a vibrant wash of color that matched the washi tape perfectly (since it's also by Dina!)  I splattered a bit of the paint along the left side of the card to balance the colors a bit.  I finished off this card with the sentiment that came with the stamp set and a bit of Distress Stickles in the center of my flower.




For my second card, I went with a yellow flower and a few touches of pink.  I die cut a Miss You sentiment by MFT in a green cardstock that coordinated with the leaves and assembled my card, using a generous amount of foam tape around the edges to give extra stability.  I skipped the splatters on this card leaving extra white space.




These cards came together fairly quickly once I had the design concept!   I think that's something a lot of people don't realize, just because a card is simple doesn't mean a lot of time and energy didn't go into it.  I find simple cards often require more effort on the planning end because each of the few elements needs to be just right :)  Hope you like my cards and they brought some cheer to your Tuesday!  Here's a final photo with the two cards together- at first glance you'd almost think I used different stamps!  Love the versatility of florals... and I love that I have some brave daffodils blooming in my garden so I could cut some for these photos ;)




Inky hugs,
Tara

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