Simple Summer Stems

Today's card was inspired by the July theme and sketch challenge @ STAMPlorations and will be entered @ Daisy Chain Challenges for "Floral" and @ Word Art Wednesday for "Anything Goes". But I did change the card sketch orientation from vertical to horizontal in order to accommodate the size of my stamped elements.

The first thing I did when making this card was stamped each flower stem (stamps are long ago retired from TAC) in black ink on white card stock, colored them using a new set of colored pencils that we are going to start use at my library classes and then fussy cut them out.

The card base itself is made from an A7 white card base and the dry embossed layer is also white and was trimmed just shy of the 5 x 7 card front size before I cut three circles out of the front of it using my CM circle template cutting tool set. After cutting the circles, I ran it through my die cutting machine with the embossing folder.

I lightly traced through the circles to the card front so that I could see what area needed to be colored using Marigold Distress ink and a blending tool then spritzed it with water to get it to react with the water droplet pattern.

Using two different sizes of foam pop dots, I added the embossed layer centered on the card front with the thinner ones and the stems with the thicker ones to help them stand up higher. 

But before I added the stems I decided they needed to be sponged lightly on the edges with a pale blue ink to help them stand out a bit more from the white background...very subtle touch, but it worked perfectly! I did also add clear Wink of Stella over the middle flowers, but sadly the camera doesn't really do a very good job of capturing that at all.

The sentiment is also a retired stamp from TAC and I stamped it on a strip of marigold cardstock according to the sketch. (Now that it's all done and the final pics are taken, I almost wished that I had done some kind of distressing to the edges of the marigold cardstock the sentiment is stamped on...so who knows, I may go back and do that before I send it out in the mail, lol! If I do, I will go back and add it at the end of this post so that you can see it too.)

The inside I kept super clean and simple with a large birthday sentiment -also retired from TAC -and a small scrap of left over marigold cardstock from the card front.

That's it for me today...until next time~