Reminder: The Flower Challenge #35

Hi everybody, its halfway thru August already, which means we're at the halfway point for our current theme at The Flower Challenge!!

This month its all about using your favourite flower. And with SO MANY floral stamps and dies on the market today, I'm sure you'll find many of your favourites to use in one form or another.

Our Sponsor for this challenge is Clearly Besotted and they are giving a gift card to the winner. They have so many gorgeous floral images, along with many other stamps and dies, so its a fabulous prize!

For this card I went with one of my favourite flowers for Spring - Cherry Blossoms. I have two big trees in my garden that have double flowers and we have many streets around town that are lined both sides with flowering cherry tree's, so as you drive down its like being in a pretty pink blizzard. Spring is just around the corner for us in NZ so thought I would get a jump on the blossoms:

Recently Ellen Hutson had a sale on all her stamps, so I threw caution to the wind and grabbed some sets that I'd had been wanting for years, including the two I used on this card. I've always loved everything 'Japanese'. I decorated my bedroom when I was a kid with bamboo from a local park that my Dad helped me to cut down/borrow (there was tonnes, they never noticed). I love watching anything to do with Japanese gardens and videos where they make things like baskets, fabric etc. I feel a real connection to it and hope to visit one day!!

I started off by stamping the blossom (from Ellen Hutson 'Mondo Sakura') with Versafine ink on a panel of watercolour CS and immediately clear heat embossing. I then used my Distress Inks to watercolour the flowers and around the image. When dry I adhered to the panel to the card front.

The little Japanese woman (from Ellen Hutson 'So Matcha') was stamped with Gina K Amalgam black ink on white CS and coloured using Altenew Artist Markers. I fussy cut her out and popped on foam tape. The sentiment (from the same EH stamp set) was white heat embossed on black CS and put on foam tape, along with some Neat and Tangled sequins.

You have until Saturday 25th August to link your projects to The Flower Challenge and if your looking for more ideas, pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the Design Team have created for you. Look forward to seeing you in the Gallery!

Take care
Shona