You May Not Be There Yet But You Are Closer Than You Were Yesterday

Hi there, I hope you’re having a lovely day!

Today I’ve got a card featuring the beautiful Dahlia Close Up 2 stamp from The Ton Stamps.  In the past I would probably have been intimidated by this giant floral but Effie, from The Ton, teaches an easy technique that leads to great results!

I started by using Versafine Clair Nocturne ink and clear Super Fine embossing powder from Hero Arts to heat emboss the floral onto Fabriano Artistico Extra White Cold Press watercolor paper.

For watercoloring, I used Brusho which is a pigment powder akin to Color Burst powders.  I started by adding a very light sprinkling of Purple powder to a palette and adding a single drop of water.  Then, with a round 2 brush, I added just a bit of this dark concentrated color to the deepest area of a dry, single petal.  Using a fine Pentel Aquash water brush, I painted the rest of that petal with clean clear water, and when the water met the purple pigment, the pigment spread.  I pulled out the color with the water brush to cover the entire petal and also softened any harsh lines.

I repeated this on each petal and then went back over each petal, when it was dry, to add Crimson red.  I didn’t use as much Crimson, and varied the intensity of red on each petal to give a slightly random look.

When the panel was dry, I trimmed it to A2 size. I used the same ink and embossing powder to heat emboss the sentiment onto a strip of vellum and then wrapped the vellum strip around the bottom of the floral, adhering it to the back with regular clear tape.  The sentiment is from Simon Says Stamp’s You Got This stamp set and is likely my very favorite encouragement sentiment.

Finally, I adhered the card front to an A2-sized card base.

Thank you so much for visiting!