Engineered Florals (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I have some projects to share with you today using the fabulous stamps and stencils that we brought to you during last month's TV shows on Hochanda. I hope that you managed to catch the shows, they were a whirlwind of activity, as the stamps sold out very quickly, but Lesley and I enjoyed ourselves enormously trying to keep up with what was happening!

My first card was created using the beautiful Freesia Blueprint stamp set. I used the Dotty stencil from the Strip Stencil - Collection 1 set and added some texture paste to a piece of drawing cartridge. I coloured the background using Distress Ink once the texture paste was completely dry. I added some background stamping using one of the smaller images from the stamp plate.

I stamped the main freesia image onto another piece of drawing cartridge, and coloured the image with Koh-I-Noor watercolour pencils. I stamped a sentiment onto a small piece of card, coloured in the same colours as the main background, and edged all of the pieces with brown ink.

To create my second card, I took a piece of glossy card, and embossed a couple of images from the Wild Cornflower Blueprint stamp set using white embossing powder. I then covered the background with blue Distress Ink and polished the card. I stamped the main image from the stamp set onto a piece of smooth stamping paper using blue ink, and coloured the image using pencils as before. I added a sentiment, and some shading with blue ink, before edging the paper with dark blue ink.

Using a piece of drawing cartridge, I added some yellow Distress Ink to create a background, and then drew lots of postage stamp shapes using one of the inserts from Triple Postage, another one of the Strip Stencil - Collection 1 set. I stamped the smaller images from all of the stamp sets into the postage stamp shapes, and coloured them with pencils, adding a sentiment into one of the shapes. For extra definition, you could add shading around the shapes to give a 3D effect, making the postage stamps look as if they had been stuck onto the background.

My final card was created by adding one of the beautiful Designer Papers A5- Background Splash, designed by Lesley, onto a card blank. I stamped one of the engineer's drawings from the Sweetpeas Blueprint stamp set three times across a piece of drawing cartridge. I varied the height of each image. I added some foliage in between the images and coloured everything in with pencils. I stamped the small sweetpea flower head onto a scrap piece of the patterned paper three times, and cut them out. I stuck each flower head into the top of a 'bulb'. This piece of apparatus is actually a flagpole, but I thought that it resembled a quirky specimen jar and made a perfect home for the flower heads.

I edged the card with black ink before attaching it to the coloured bakground.

I hope that you have enjoyed my first batch of cards this month. I will be back later on with more inspiration to share with you. Thanks for stopping by,

Judith xx