Reminder: The Flower Challenge #34

Hi everyone!! I've just come back from a weekend at my Mum's house, where MANY cards were made, lots of chocolate consumed and I'm nearly through Season 2 of Boston Legal on dvd....it was awesome!!! We also went to see the movie 'Crawl', a horror movie about alligators, which was real 'edge of your seat' stuff, highly recommend it!!

I'm popping in today to remind you all about our current theme at The Flower Challenge. Its all about 'Pretty Pastels' which I think is a huge favourite when it comes to colouring floral images. Being right in the middle of Winter there aren't many flowers around at the moment (although its been so warm, some roses are still going strong and even some tree's have started blossoming....), I can't wait for Spring to see all the flowering cherries start to bloom.

Our Sponsor for this challenge is Uniko and they are giving a stamp set to the winner. They have some gorgeous floral stamps, so would be so hard to pick just one!!

Since Uniko is our Sponsor, I decided to use their stamps (which I had in my stash) for my card design. The flower is from one of the very first Uniko stamp sets I purchased and its still fabulous, especially for colouring:

I've always loved light blue (especially Tiffany blue) and pairing it with a pink is such a sweet combo.

I started by stamping the flower image from Uniko 'Flower Power #2' with Versafine black ink on watercolour CS and immediately clear heat embossing with Simon Says Stamp 'Clear Embossing Powder'. I did this 10x!! I then watercoloured each flower with Catherine Pooler 'Fiesta Blue' ink, not worrying about getting it perfect. I did a soft colour layer first, dried the flowers with the heat gun and then went back in with the same colour but with less water to add some depth. Once they had dried I fussy cut them out.

For the background I wanted something 'pretty' and not too solid, so I stamped the Uniko 'Large Background: Scattered Polka Hearts' stamp on the card front using Catherine Pooler 'Be Mine' ink, stamping it twice for a darker hue.

To create the ring of flowers I die-cut a piece of grey CS with a Couture Creations circle die and added white foam behind it, adhering to the card front. I cut little squares of foam tape to put on the back of all the flowers and then set about layering them on each other around the edge of the circle. For the sentiment (from Uniquely Creative 'Beautiful Birthday Wishes') I stamped it on white CS with Versafine black ink and put on a double-layer of foam tape. And instead of sequins I glued clear jewels from Pretty Pink Posh in the middle of the flowers, with a smaller one by the sentiment.

I'm going to link this to the AAA Birthday Challenge: Game #3 where their theme is 'For the Girls'.

And will also join the Stamplorations - July is World Watercolour Month linky party.

You have until Thursday 25th July to link your projects to The Flower Challenge and if your needing any inspiration, pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the Design Team and our talented Guest Designer Michelle of Handmade by Michelle have created for you. Looking forward to seeing all your pastel gorgeousness in the Gallery!

Take care
Shona