Flower Frame

I’ve been wanting to make some floating frame cards ever since I saw this video by Jennifer McGuire, so when the latest Simon Says Monday Challenge was Beautiful Blossoms, I figured it was the perfect time to try.  

Since I have the Altenew Spring Daisies stamp set, I decided to use that.  This is the color palette I chose.


I don’t have enough dye inks in shades of red, so I used my Distress Oxide ink pads (note to self: find dye inks in a wide range of reds). I used Candied Apple, Fired Brick, Aged Mahogany, and Barn Door for the reds, plus Hickory Smoke and Weathered Wood for the grays. 

After stamping with this set, I wasn’t happy with the way the flowers & leaves looked. This set only stamps an outside line design and 1 layer of color that leaves the rest of the flower blank. To fix that, I added a second, different, shade of ink to each one using a small paint brush.

After cutting them out with the coordinating dies, I wasn’t happy with the white edge the dies leave around the design. With the need to group these closely together, the white takes up too much room. I ended up fussy cutting each flower & leaf.

I put a gray mat on the outer frame card because I didn’t want all that  white space with my color palette, and, therefore, I embossed the sentiment in white. It also ended up having too much space in the middle, given the small sentiment stamp I used, so I added one of my leftover flowers. 

On the second card I put a gray frame around the flowers and a small sentiment in the bottom right corner. I added Nuvo Drops in Ebony Black on both cards to fill it in a bit and add more interest (still practicing with these).


Ok, lessons learned:

  • The size of the flowers should be a little smaller, these were a bit too large to work well for this technique. There’s no way to have a full flower anywhere on the outside frame. I have the Altenew Painted Flowers set. I think that one would look nice.
  • I need to get some plain rectangular frame dies, i.e., no stitching. The stitching caused problems with the Glad Press & Seal, sticking in the space between the stitches. I couldn’t get some of it off and the stitching cut too far through the cardstock in places.
  • Use the next smaller size rectangle die next time. I cut too much off the edges. It would have been better to have a smaller center portion and wider outer frame.
  • Get some more colors of dye ink. The Distress Oxides leave a dull finish that didn’t show the shades to best advantage. If I’d thought of it, I’d have sprayed the flowers and leaves with a glossy sealer before or after die cutting.
  • If I’m going to use a colored mat under the “frame”, it needs to be the full size of the card front. You can see the white around this card, and when attaching the stamps with the Press & Seal, some of the pieces kind of slid off the edge of the mat and look crooked.
Overall, not a bad 1st try. They are still useable so, yay!



Thanks for stopping by!

Sandy


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Candy Cane Deluxe

Image
For the  Simon Says: Food and/or Drink challenge , one of the examples had a candy cane , so I thought I’d use some too. I just got a pine tree frame die & it would be perfect for that. I could make it look like a tree with candy canes & an ornament. Here’s how it turned out: I used my Cricut to cut the candy canes, ornament, some extra pine sprigs, & the Merry Christmas. The frame was die cut, and I used a scrap of green print cardstock for the backing. I embossed the Merry Christmas in black, then put everything together on a green card base. Thanks for stopping by! Sandy
Read more

Hydrangea Highlight

Image
The second card I made today was specifically for the  Altenew March 2022 Inspiration Challenge , although I used Colorado Craft Company stamp for it. I had pulled out their Big Hydrangea stamp set to use a sentiment from it so just used the hydrangea part for this. Here is the inspiration picture from Altenew. I went with the colors for this card, as close as I could get, and did a sort of color blocking effect. I’ve seen it before on other cards and thought it looked nice and easy. I started by stamping the hydrangea in black ink on a 4-1/4” x 6” piece of white cardstock. After masking off the edges with low tack tape (I actually used blue painters tape) I masked off the bottom third of the center and blended on Distress Oxide Peeled Paint, masked off the middle portion and used DO Mustard Seed, and used DO Milled Lavender on the top. Using a script Happy Birthday die, I cut it 3 times in white and once in black. After gluing all 3 white pieces together I glued the black piece on th
Read more

Red & White

Image
For the  Simon Says: Red White and/or Blue challenge I decided to stick with red & white since I saw this card that I wanted to use for my inspiration, using white instead of gold. I used Distress Oxide Black Soot to blend around the edges, since it’s an ink that blends easily. I used the Gina K Holiday Tapestry stamp for the background, the label is from the Stampin’ Up Painted Labels die set, and the sentiment from the Colorado Crafts Big Hydrangea set. It’s not as elegant, but did turn out pretty, didn’t it? I’m also going to enter it in the The House That Stamps Built Theme Challenge J3021 ~ Red, White and Blue and the Simon Says: Anything Goes challenge. Thanks for stopping by! Sandy
Read more