To Plant A Garden

Hey Rubber Cafe fans, it's Katrina with my first guest design posting!  I was so excited to be asked, since I have been wanting to get back into stamping more on my projects.  The Creative Cafe Kit-Farm Fresh is a fun one to get your stamping groove on.

Today I have a few tips and tricks that I did with my first card that I wanted to share with you.  I don't have step out photos, but I do have close ups that will show you what I did to make the stamping fun and unique to the card.  Actually I use these techniques a lot when I stamp on projects.

I paired the flower bouquet and the "to plant a garden..." verse from the Home Grown stamp set. I have recently started to love watercoloring and thought the bouquet would be a fun one to do.  I did most of the the coloring with some Faber-Castell watercolor pencils I had in my stash.  If you are starting out, pencils are easier to control where the color goes, shading, etc.  

To create this look, I first stamped the bouquet image with Versafine ink in Onyx and then proceed to color with various colors.  I added some shading by going back over sections after I had watercolored them, with the same color but just not blending it out.  You can see that in the tulips quite well. Once the image was dry, I then went over the flowers with a Wink of Stella pen in white.  I actually thought it was clear when I started, but I love how it created shading and make it a little sparkly in the process. I also used a Signo Uniball pen in White and made little dots on the ends of the stems that looked like baby's breath. 

Once I had my bouquet done and trimmed out, I decided I wanted more depth to my card. I cut a piece of white cardstock that would fit the bouquet and verse side by side and then stamped them both.  I quickly colored the bouquet that I stamped the second time, just in the areas I knew it would show.  Using foam adhesive I popped up the bouquet I had first colored and offset it slightly from the other bouquet. This actually gives the illusion of a bigger bouquet, without a lot of time spend on it!

Thanks for stopping by today!  I hope I gave you some tips and tricks to use in your next card! 

Katrina Hunt

Supplies:

Stamps:  The Rubber Cafe'-Creative Cafe' KOTM: HomeGrown/Farm Fresh

Paper:  The Rubber Cafe'-Farm Fresh

Ink/Color:  Faber-Castell Aquarelle Pencils; Versafine Ink-Onyx; Wink of Stell-White; Signo Uniball-White

Adhesives: ThermOWeb Mini Tape Runner; 3D Foam Adhesive Squares

Embellishments:  The Rubber Cafe'-Farm Fresh