I spent another Saturday making birthday items—we have lots of Spring birthdays in the family! This time I created a special gift box purse filled with cards for my mother-in-law, Nancy. To add an element of surprise to the this Elements of Style ensemble, I'll be revealing the three card designs and purse in separate posts over the next few days. Here is the first card set…
Creating A Theme
Elements of Style is such a beautiful stamp set and looks amazing with watercolor techniques. To create a themed look throughout my cards, I featured the same flowers with watercolor techniques in the same colors: Rose Red, Bordering Blue (retiring), Mellow Moss (retiring) and So Saffron.
Each card also was created on a Kraft (soon-to be called Crumb Cake) card stock base and was layered with Bordering Blue card stock. The purse (you'll see that later) is decorated with paper from Bella Bleu Designer Series Paper and embellished with Chocolate Chip ribbon and buttons, so you'll also find the same paper and chocolate chip colors used as accents.
You'll be able to see the entire gift set in my last post on Wednesday…quite the cliffhanger, huh?!
Embossed Vine Card Details
I love flourishes and swirly stamps for backgrounds and the vine in this set doesn't disappoint. I love how it looked when I heat embossed it on Bordering Blue card stock with VersaMark and Clear Embossing Powder! The simple design of these two cards allows the clear embossed vine background to become more of a focal element. I layered this piece on Chocolate Chip, then wrapped it with Kraft Taffeta Ribbon.
The floral piece is stamped in Chocolate Chip Classic Ink, then colored with Watercolor Crayons and "watercolored" with Blender Pens. Normally, I would recommend using StazOn Black anytime you want to try a watercoloring technique, but as long as you are using a Blender Pen and don't blend it too much, you'll get a nice look. The more you work the color, the better the chances of smearing the original image. Overworking it may also start to pill the card stock, so spread the color, then let it go. If you want to avoid pilling and achieve a real watercolor look, try Watercolor Paper with an Aqua Painter—an awesome technique for cards!
The sentiment is from the new Watercolor Trio set—gosh, the words in that set look so pretty! Colored in Rose Red and Bordering Blue Markers, stamped, and punched with the Large Oval Punch.
Tomorrow, we'll get a little Shimmery with my second Elements of Style Gift Set design…
Angie