TCTC#6 - You'll Be Missed

I have the honour of being a Guest Designer for The Colour Tree Challenge this month.  I was over the moon when Bronwyn contacted me and, truth be told, am still very excited about it.  The challenge this week uses some beautiful purples.

I had to think about what I would do with these colours.  The Blackberry Bliss, especially, can be so very dark that it almost appears to be black in pictures.  Of course I didn't want that to happen with my stamping.  And so I chose to do a lot of off-stamping.  What is off-stamping, you ask?  Well, after inking up one's stamp the regular way, one stamps the image on a scrap piece of paper and then stamps the image onto the cardstock which is going to be part of the card.  Does that make sense?  What I love about this technique is that it results in a lot of variations of colour.  Especially since I didn't just stamp off once.  For the Rich Razzleberry and the Blackberry Bliss, I stamped off twice before stamping onto my good Whisper White.

After using the Botanical Blooms stamp set for my stamping, I ran the Whisper White piece through my Big Shot using the Elegant Dots embossing folder to add texture.  Then I cut several leaves from Blackberry Bliss cardstock using the Botanical Builder framelit dies, stamped veins on them with my Botanical Blooms set and added them to my Whisper White in random spots.  Finally, I cut flower centres from Blackberry Bliss, Rich Razzleberry, and Perfect Plum cardstock using the Botanical Builder framelit dies.  Since I used each for the centre of the flower stamped with that ink, you can really tell what a difference the off-stamping makes compared to the actual "full" colour.

For the card I used a base of Heavy Whisper White and then added a layer of Blackberry Bliss cardstock before attaching the stamped and embossed Whisper White layer.  I also added several butterflies from the Papillon Potpourri set, stamped on vellum and heat embossed in clear embossing powder.  A few pearls in the centre of my flowers, a sentiment, and the card is done.

I hope you'll check out the wonderful project created by Bronwyn and then link up your own project at The Colour Tree Challenge.