A Subtle Salute to Flowers, Butterflies and Friendship!

I must be a glutton for punishment because I've made another card where I cut out the Lupines from the Forever Florals stamp set.  They're gorgeous flowers but, oh, so fussy.  My only excuse is that creative imp that rides on my shoulder and whispers in my ear was very convincing.  Ah well, I like the way the card turned out.

For this card I turned to two challenges.  Around the World Stampin' Up! Challenges provided the sketch

The colours that I chose were suggested by the colourQ Challenge

Actually the whole flower and butterfly theme that I used for my card came as an inspiration from seeing the Botanical Boudoir curtain from ModCloth.,  I love it when it happens like that.

I decided to use Naturals White as my base cardstock and then added a layer of Soft Sky.  For my next layer I used two strips of cardstock.  The upper Wisteria Wonder strip is stamped in Wisteria Wonder ink using flowers from the Forever Florals stamp set.  The lower Old Olive strip is embossed using my Decorative Dots embossing folder. 

I tried something different with my centre panel.  First I stamped one side of a piece of Whisper White cardstock with the Lupine stamp from the Forever Florals set.  Then I coloured the flower using my Rich Razzleberry and Old Olive Blendabilities.  After colouring the Lupine, I fussy cut around the whole of the outside and part of the top and bottom, leaving approximately 2 1/2" uncut.  Then I used my Stampin' Trimmer and cut the Whisper White so that it measured 2 1/2" in height and approximately 4" from the outside of the Lupine to the cut edge.

For my next step, I stamped the trio of tiny flowers from the stamp set into the top right corner of the Whisper White.  Then I stamped the same trio onto a piece of Post-It note and fussy-cut them out.  I stuck them onto the stamped flowers on the Whisper White to mask them and then stamped the leafy branch from the Choose Happiness stamp set over them.   After removing the tiny flower masks, I coloured the trio of flowers using my Wisteria Wonder Blendabilities and the leafy branch using my Old Olive Blendabilities.

I mounted the stamped and coloured Whisper White piece to a 2 3/4" x 4" rectangle of Soft Sky.  After that I stamped the large butterfly from the Papillon Potpourri stamp set between the Lupine and trio of flowers.  I also stamped the same butterfly onto a small piece of Whisper White.  Then I coloured both with my Rich Razzleberry and Wisteria Wonder Blendabilities and Stampin' Markers.  I used my Elegant Butterfly punch to cut out the butterfly and then creased the wings upwards and attached it to the centre of the stamped butterfly.

I had thought I might  put my sentiment onto a piece of Vellum cardstock but then I wondered if I could heat emboss my sentiment onto Washi Tape instead.  Well, you know what they say, right?  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  So I stamped the sentiment from the Choose Happiness stamp set onto a piece of the Watercolor Wonder Washi Tape using Versamark.  Then, holding my breath, I heat-embossed it using Black embossing powder.  The world didn't end---the Washi Tape didn't crinkle---it was a perfect piece of heat-embossing.  I was thrilled.  It's so nice when things work out the way you hope.

I adhered that Washi Tape across the bottom portion of my centre panel, stretching from one side of the card to the other.  To finish up, I attached a Candy Dot to either end.  I didn't have Rich Razzleberry but the white Candy Dot coloured up perfectly with my Blendabilities---it actually ended up leaving a beautiful marbled effect.

For more cards using this sketch, check out the Around the World Stampin' Up! Challenge.

For more cards using these colours, check out the colourQ Challenge.