Californian Poppies

Hi there everybody.  Today I am showing a card made with one of my favourite flowers and a stamp by Penny Black.  I was late sending this card so opted for something straight forward.  I coloured the poppies using a set of Lyra Aqua Markers, just a small set with basic colours as I just wanted to see how they worked, and I was fairly satisfied with the result.  The paper was a snippet and to be honest as this technique uses a fair amount of water the paper didn't hold up all that well, but as time was short I persevered.

The background was made using the smooshing technique by swiping the inks from the pad on to a piece of acrylic cut to a little larger than my base card,  and I used just a couple of blue inks, Tumbled Glass and Stormy Sky,  spritzed with water and pulled the paper through it to give quite an even finish.  I wanted a bit darker colour in the top left corner so I added a bit more of the darker colour which was the Stormy Sky DI, and added more water, and this time laid the card down and concentrated on keeping the colour in that corner.

After drying it I stamped just one of the flowers with a bit of the stem using Versafine Smokey Gray ink, and then coloured with the Lyra Aquamarkers.  I used the lightest yellow straight from the pen and then darkened a bit with the next yellow just leaving a few lighter areas, and then finally the orange, which is quite a strong colour, so I used it watered down by putting some of the colour on my glass mat and then used a water brush and gradually darkened in some areas as you can see.

I finished the card by mounting on to a white square base card and layered up using snippets of dark blue and a cream which I cut using a Scalloped Square die from a set by Tonic.  I then added the die cut sentiment using another snippet of dark blue backing the card with Stick It adhesive.

Thank you for stopping by my blog today.  See you soon.

I am entering the following challenges:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 245 where we use our snippets of paper and card etc.
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.
Simon Says Monday Challenge - Stamp It.
Penny Black Saturday Challenge Blog - Nature.
Penny Black and More Challenge - Add a Sentiment.