flowers and leaves...

I have been pretty busy lately making cards.  Not sure what happened other than maybe I got some inspiration because normally I only make about two cards per week.  In the last two weeks I have made about 10 cards and a lot of them have involved coloring.  More specifically watercoloring.  Today I have another card that I created using the beautiful MFT Fresh Cut Flowers background stamp (which is on sale right now for 20% off).  I did some practicing of my no line watercoloring and while there were a couple of areas that didn't go so well overall I'm pleased with how the image turned out.  I used the layout from Freshly Made Sketches for my card so I will be posting it there.  I stamped the image on Canson watercolor paper using Antique Linen distress ink and then colored the smaller flowers with Worn Lipstick distress ink and the bigger flowers with Festive Berries distress ink.   The leaves were colored with a combination of Mowed Lawn and Peeled Paint distress inks. When I was done I did try to add a little bit more shadow using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils on just the flowers.  I used a red and a pink for this.  I die cut the image with a rectangle die and then foam mounted it on a light gray cardstock base.  The sentiment is from an older MFT set called Amazing.  I heat embossed it in white on vellum and then die cut it with the MFT Slanted Sentiment Strips die (these are no longer available as a two die set like I have, but you can get them in a set of 3 dies set.).  I adhered that with Nuvo Deluxe adhesive to the card front.  When I saw the new Time Out challenge I thought this card would work so I will be posting it there.

The second card is all about die cutting.  When I originally started the first card I had thought I would die cut the large Thank You word die that I had gotten from MFT from the center of the flower, but after spending all that time coloring the image (I worked on it when I had a free moment so it took two days!) I decided that I didn't want to die cut it after all.  But I still wanted to use that die as I had never used it before.  So I went the patterned paper route and pulled out the pretty Fall Market pad from Carta Bell.  I did the inlaid die cutting technique for this card using two different patterns from the pad.  Once I had that done I thought the card needed something more so I added the little leaves that I die cut from the scraps using the AJVD Leaves and Petal die set.   I'm posting this to this week's Paper Players challenge to make the sentiment the focus of your card, but now with the leaves I'm wondering if it distracts too much from the sentiment.  You be the judge.  I'm also going to add it to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge to use fall colors.  Die cutting done with my Gemini Jr. and my Big Shot Plus.

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