Believe, Wish, Poppy... combining blending and painting by Natalie Ballard.

 

So this one features an intricate die-cut or two but I want to focus on the main panel first. 

This card uses the feature image of the Wish Flower stamp alongside the sentiment from Words of Comfort and Cheer. Stamp your main image onto smooth thick card using a water resistant ink pad in dark grey or black. It is important that your card is smooth to get a clear outline; but, it also needs to not "pill" when water is applied to it.

The image is painted with gouache paints. These dry opaque and with a chalk-like finish; they also take very little water. To keep your shading on your stamped image, add a little extra water to these areas. I used orange, red and an earthy green shade paint; the orange colour should be darker and more opaque towards the bottom of each petal. Once this layer has dried, you can go over with the red to add shading detail. Painting with gouache is very different to painting with watercolour, so the goal isn't perfectly blended shades, but flat, distinct colour areas. The green areas are built up of different opacities of the green shade. Add spatter in each of the colours and set aside to dry.

Once the panel has dried, you can blend Antique Linen Distress Ink or a similar blending dye ink to tone both the paper and the paint. Now, gouache is not water resistant, so don't brush ink over too heavily. Carry out any trimming or cutting before this ink blending step for the best result.

Using a fineliner, doodle a border around the edge. Many people get nervous while doing this, so here's my top tips: do a double line, purposely go wobbly, and watch where your line is heading and not where you are drawing. You can add twiddly bits, little dashes and stitches or zigzag across wider gaps between your lines.

The card assembly starts with a semi-circle intricate die placed to one side of your card and overlapping the fold. Trim this to the fold and retain the cut off piece. Adhere your panel on next and layer up your sentiment onto contrasting card. Cut two corners from the same contrast card and use these as the top and bottom of the sentiment panel to give a scroll like feel. Tuck under two "ribbons" cut from the two card colours along with the panel offcut. 

The card is now finished but if you want to add a further embellishment you can add a doodle border around the edge of the card.