Botanical

I love those old Victorian botanical drawings, and the stamps on this card are all taken from the 7Gypsies "Conservatory" set.

"Nature"

I recently acquired some really good quality 300gsm cardstock, and it's been fun playing around colouring and stamping straight onto the card. The background here was coloured with distress inks and dried before stamping in Brushed Corduroy and decorating with gold Perfect Pearls (I can't get enough of these at the moment!). The main image was stamped in brushed corduroy. Masking techniques were used to block areas for distress colouring, then the individual stamps were gently coloured using a watercolour brush dipped in water & a little of each distress ink colour. Keeping to a muted & limited colour palette helps tie all the elements together.

"Side view showing dimension"

With so much stamping and colouring going on, the layout has been kept very simple. The main image panel was matted onto a thin frame of hammered gold cardstock (to match in with the perfect pearls), and layered onto the background with a thin strip of gold & deep pink lace. The (Tim Holtz) sentiment is simlarly coloured, matted & layered using the small oval & scalloped oval Nestabilities from Spellbinder. Both panels were adhered to the card using Pinflair to add some dimension.

"Butterfly"

For added interest, one of the butterflies was stamped in black archival ink onto thin acetate, cut out and the wings shaped, then stuck to the main image with glossy accents.

Entered for the following challenges:
Ribbon Carousel - non-traditional colours (botanical drawings should be black and white)
Cheerful Stamp Pad - birds of a feather
Truly Madly Crafty - Anything Goes
Bunny Zoe's Crafts - photo inspiration
Let's Ink it Up - Anything Goes
Fashionable Stamping - butterflies and bugs
Moving Along with the Times - things with wings
Simon Says - anything goes