Happy Little Stampers October Christmas Challenge Reminder

Hi everyone.  I am back again with my second post as Guest Designer for the Happy Little Stampers Christmas Challenge and this is for the mid month reminder.  I decided that as I won the July challenge with a watercolour type card I would do something along the same lines.
 

For this card I have used a stamp from Chocolate Baroque which I have had for a couple of years but which unfortunately isn't available any more, but I like the shape of the flower and it is also a nice size.

I stamped it using Festive Berries Distress Ink on to a piece of watercolour paper.  I stamped it three times and had to have two masks as the flowers form a tight group.  I then pulled the ink in to the petals from the edge with a brush and some water just to take the whiteness off.  Next I worked on one petal at a time building up the colour with some more of the red and then whilst still wet I introduced some Seedless Preserves DI to add some shading.   I waited for the petals to dry or speeded the process a bit with my heat gun until I had been right round the flowers.  I then added some Mustard Seed DI with a little of the red to take off the harshness of the yellow and to shade the centres a bit.  I did go round and add more colour where I thought it needed it, but it is easy to overwork it so you have to try to judge when enough is enough.

I continued with the background making sure the flowers were dry first.  I used some Bundled Sage DI to start with by wetting the background as I went along, and when this was dry added Pine Needles DI round the flowers.  As even with watercolour paper the water makes it buckle a bit I stuck it under a heavy book overnight which did a good job of  flattening it.  On looking at it the next day I thought the background colour seemed a bit flat so decided to try and lift the colour by adding a little Peacock Feathers DI and this worked better I thought.

To finish it I cut the piece down and mounted it on to some gold mirri card and then mounted this on to my white square card.  I used a spare piece of card coloured to match the background and cut using one of the smaller dies from a Spellbinders set Floral Ovals and stamped the sentiment using Versamark and WOW Gold Embossing Powder.  When I had added this I decided to further enhance the background and sentiment with some stars and dots cut from a Memory Box die Snowflake Corner.

I have had so much fun and I would like to thank everyone over at HLS for making me so welcome.  They are all very talented so do go and take a look at their beautiful work and there is still plenty of time to enter this month's challenge.  You will find the details HERE.

Thank you for taking a look today.

Pat  x

I would like to enter this into the following challenge:

The 30 Day Coloring Challenge