Spring into Summer

Hi there.  Well I suppose we must say that now we are nearly half way through May that Spring has probably moved on into early Summer.  I am one of those card makers that prefers to use the flowers of that season on cards but I hadn't used these tulips this Spring, in fact I don' t think I have used this particular stamp before, so I decided that while there is still a chance that tulips could still be blooming I had better use them.  These stamps are from Chocolate Baroque and called Spring Bird Tulip and as the name suggests there are birds on this set too which could more readily be used throughout the year.

I found a snippet of blue card and after cutting it slightly smaller than the white base card used a freebie border embossing folder on each of the edges, embossed using my Grand Calibur.

I found another snippet of white card and stamped the tulips twice using Versafine Smokey Gray ink.  I then coloured with Distress Inks and a waterbrush using Fired Brick and Picked Raspberry for the flower heads and Sage Green and Mustard Seed for the leaves and stems, and in the background Shaded Lilac and Tumbled Glass.  I wanted the higher set of flowers to fade into the background a bit more so I used the background colours, using the Distress Inks again with a waterbrush, over the top of them and then the rest of the background was blended mainly around the lower set of flowers.  I also used a Crackle Background stamp from Crafty Individuals and the Tumbled Glass DI which only really shows in the photo at the bottom right hand corner although I did use it randomly to fill the gaps, but after adding some more of the background ink it seems to have all but disappeared.  I added a bit more of the Shaded Lilac round the edge using blending foam before mounting it on to a snippet of dark blue card.

I finished with a sentiment which I stamped on to another snippet of the blue card using the Smokey Gray ink and as it stays wet a little longer than some other inks I managed to add some WOW Clear Embossing Powder and heat set it to give it some gloss, and then shaped it into a small fishtail banner.  I blended some a little of the Shaded Lilac DI around the edge here too.

Thank you for taking  a look today.

Pat  x

I would like to enter the following challenges:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 228 where we use up our snippets of card and paper etc.
Simon Says Monday Challenge - Emboss It.
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Flowers.
Cuttlebug Mania - May Flowers.