Glorious Poppies by Brenda

Good morning Peeps, Brenda here with some shares from my samples for Lesley's June shows on Hochanda which featured some beautiful floral and succulent stamps. It occurred to me as I was scheduling this post that today would have been my maternal Grandmothers Birthday, she loved her cottage garden so my cards seem a very fitting tribute to her.

For my top card I repeat stamped what I have decided is a Poppy from Scrumptious Succulents around the borders of my base layer and coloured in with pens. Next an oval aperture at an angle which I edged with a pearl string and stamped a sentiment from Loving Sentiments to fit in the frame.

Here I have a bookmark, the base piece is 600gsm Fabriano which takes water really well without warping so perfect for purpose. After adding Distress Oxides, I stamped the lovely flower which I think looks rather like a Hollyhock from Blossom and Grow.............although there's a bit of atistic licence with the colours..........and coloured in with pens, then stamped part of one of the Cacti from Scrumptious Succulents around the edge using Versamark and heat embossed with details gold.

I have always liked the shape of the boxes and cards using this die set so I decided on another offering using the new stamps, the flowers on the top are from Captivating Cacti, stamped several time, coloured and cut out to build. I then used a mixture of stamps from the three sets mentioned above, colouring all with sparkle pens adding some stenciling and sentiments from the same sets.

My final card today has a background using Distress Inks blended with a little glycerine which seems to give a lovely soft finish, a sponged sun and the blooms from  Blossom and Grow stamped in versfaine black and left un-coloured as I felt there was enough drama in the strong background colours.

My thanks as always for popping in today and I hope I have offered some inspiration to those of you who already have the stamps and if you don't, then I hope you will want to pop over to the shop and treat yourself.