a shamrock and a peony...

 Hello!  Hope your week is off to a good start!  We have had a little bit of snow here in my corner of the Pacific Northwest.  The weather report actually calls for rain, but it is cold enough that the rain is coming down as snow!  Won't be sticking around, tho... thankfully!  I have two more cards to share.  I have been in a crafting mood lately and finally participated in a couple of challenges that I always want to take on, but mostly never seem to get the chance to do.  First up is a card for the current Inspired By challenge.   I have a couple of rainbow dies from MFT and used one that is sort of wonky to create my rainbow.  I die cut green glitter cardstock and gold mirror cardstock then alternated the two for my rainbow.  I die cut scrap white cardstock three more times with the die and adhered those to my top pieces to create a nice sturdy rainbow.   I die cut three small hearts using the AJVD Stitched Dot Hearts die set from green glitter cardstock to create my shamrock and the stem from the gold mirror cardstock.  I adhered the rainbow  to a panel of white cardstock and then added the shamrock.  I couldn't find one sentiment in my large collection of stamps that had anything to do with luck!  So I ended up using this lovely verse that is part of a sympathy stamp set from AJVD.  Originally I stamped it in green directly on my panel under the rainbow, but it wasn't straight!  I didn't like the look of the green so I when I restamped it on my banner I used watermark ink and embossed it in gold.  I like that much better!  Also sending this off to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge to use green.

This next card is for the MFT sketch challenge.  I always want to play along with that challenge because I love a good sketch, but never seem to find the time.  I did this weekend... yay!    I pulled out the MFT Peony Perfection stamp as it is perfect fot the sketch and I had never used it!   I love floral images, but get a little intimidated by how complex they can be.  I never know if I'm putting the shadow in the right place, but I decided that I just needed to get over that and color things how I think they should be and so I did!  I used my ZIG Clean Color Real Brush markers for the coloring as well as a couple of Polychromos color pencils.  I stamped the image using VersaFine CLAIR Acorn ink on smooth bristol cardstock and started coloring.  Once the coloring was done I trimmed out the flower.  That was a trick, but I got it done!  I used the MFT Rectangle Extraordinaire to create the element across the card.  I blended on distress oxide in Tumbled Glass.  Going heavy on the top and fading down to the bottom.  I then die cut the panel with a rectangle die.  I adhered the flower in the center and then stamped the sentiment (from Simon Says Stamp) in Tumbled Glass distress oxide underneath.  I also discovered that apparently I do not own any stamps that actually say Happy Easter!  So funny!  Anywhoo.... I finished off the card with lots of sparkling clear sequins from Pretty Pink Posh.

Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely day!