Sending Hugs Flowers

Good afternoon and welcome. Surely hope that if it's brutally cold and unpleasant weather where you might be, that you can stay inside where it's cozy & warm. We have lovely sunshine, but it's a brisk 35F outside. It was 13F at 3:30am this morning. We're thankful we are not getting the same bitter cold & snow that our northern states are having, and I expect a lot of my European buddies are also having to contend with some very wintery weather. Brrrrr!

Remember this card  and my first attempt which was not good at all? I had tried for no-lines with a light brown to stamp the image; then colored with pastel shades, based on google-ing Christmas Rose, and it was really a washout. Meant to take photos to share, but that didn't happen. While looking around Youtube I found some other looks that I liked, so re-did the peach-y pastel tones I'd used, and today's card is the result. Changed to a darker blue background (alas the photo doesn't really show how really dark this background is. It shows off the dark peachy tones of this card's flowers).

 

Wplus9 Christmas Rose: original failed effort was used for the background layer. Sponged Oxide Blues, adding more darkness at each corner. Photo is not capturing this, but it looks quite nice. Colored over the smaller flowers with Yellow and YR copics, and darkened the leaves quite a lot as well. Stamped a 2nd image to get the largest flower to cut out, pop up. Fussy cut the large flower from the bottom layer as it's covered with the popup one, and used portions of it to place under the popped up flower (make sense?).  It did create quite a lot of depth, and I was finally pleased with how this looked. All the time I kept telling myself "It's just paper, you _can_ throw it away!" Don't you just hate to let something of this sort defeat you? I do! Finally used a copper Kaisercraft metallic marker to add the dots on the petals.

The blue background had water droplets sprinkled over it- which I forget to do most of the time - and then once all was put together, used a spritz of gold mica spray very lightly. The only thing I thought about changing at the last, was to add some seed beads for the centers. I've not been very successful at getting good results with those...plus they scatter everywhere as I try. Additionally this has to go through the mail, so for once I left well enough alone!! A Martha Stewart tag (VOS) was stamped with the sentiment.

 

Back later this evening with the Christmas Card Club post. Trying to start the new year off right.

 

Stay warm, thanks for visiting, and God Bless. Hugs too.