Fuchsia Birthday

Hi there everyone.  I originally made this card with the Time Out Challenge in mind, which was to case a card by Kylie, and you can find her post here but unfortunately I have just checked and the challenge has closed.  At the moment cardmaking and I are not good friends as nothing seems to have been going right lately!  Anyway here is my card and Kylie's card is on the right.  

I used the fuchsia leaves, flower and buds from a Clearly Besotted set which I got free with a magazine recently.  I stamped the leaves first on to a snippet of white card using Memento Bamboo Leaves Ink and then added the fuchsia flowers using the same green on the top of the flower and the rest of the stamp I stamped with  Addirondack Eggplant Ink and then masked the flowers and added the buds using the Bamboo Leaves .  I then coloured the flowers with a waterbrush using the Eggplant and some Distress Ink in Picked Raspberry,  and then the buds with Bamboo Leaves and  I got out a few of my Spectrum Noir pencils and added some extra shadows and highlights.  I think the buds would have looked better with less green and a little more of the open flower colours but I did add a little pink from one of the pencils to change the colour a bit.

My twist on Kylie's card was to use a woodgrain embossing folder for the top half instead of the stripes, and a piece of ribbon instead of a couple of embossed lines.  I also decided to make the topper a banner shape and then I added the sentiment  on the bottom of the background layer.  I did wish that I had added the sentiment before putting the card together because needless to say it didn't stamp at all evenly so I stamped it again on another snippet of white card and cut all round the edge of it and attached it over the top.  It probably would have looked better if I had made a mat out of it but because the sentiment was quite large there wasn't really the room for it so did the best I could.  I think I should have deconstructed it but suspected the topper would probably be ruined in the process and the thought of starting again didn't really appeal greatly.   I also managed to mark the topper so decided to get creative with a few pearls.

I hope I am over this cardmaking slump.   I'm sure I am not alone in going through a bad patch of creativity and nobody wants to listen to me bleating on endlessly about it, so thank you for visiting today because as always your interest is very much appreciated!

Pat x

I am entering the following challenges:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 164.  I used two snippets of white card, and a snippet of ribbon.
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Add A Little Texture.
Happy Little Stampers - CAS Challenge - Embossing.
Penny Black and More - Anything Goes except a digi.
Stamping Sensations - Anything Goes.
Addicted to CAS - Mask.