The Flower Challenge #41

Hi everyone!! Its been so hot here of late I've hardly been able to think, let alone make any cards. My craft area is in the hottest (and coldest) area of the house so sitting there just leaves you sweaty and exhausted. But the past few days have been the hottest so far this Summer, so no matter where I went with my MISTI and stamps, the urge to craft was way down on the list. Eating ice-cream and sitting in front of a fan was no. 1!!!

I can't believe its February already but that means it's also time for a new theme at The Flower Challenge!!  This month its all about 'Adding Leaves'. I don't know about you but I get so giddy looking at floral images I do tend to forget about the leaves so its nice to give them some attention.

Our Guest Designer for this challenge is the incredible Galina Filippenko of Galachko. I've been a huge fan of her work for years so I very excited to have her cards on the blog this month.

I'm determined this year to not buy lots of new stamps and dies before I use the ones sitting on my desk untouched. I know I'm not the only one that does this and I'll probably break this rule very soon but I need to breathe life into the products that captured my heart enough for me to get out my wallet. So this card includes two new products:

After not making many cards for a while it was so much fun getting out my ink pads and stamping in front of the tv. And our new kitten 'Remy' was fascinated with what I was doing. Although, she loves sleeping on my desk and I found my first half-finished card today with a muddy paw in the middle of it......

Using my MISTI and Waffle Flower 'Chirp! Chirp!' green ink, I stamped the solid and outlines leaves from The Stamp Market 'Botannicals', putting the solid ones in the middle and filling the spaces out from there. I did this on a panel of white CS that I then put through my Cuttlebug with The Stamp Market 'Thank you' die, using the shadow die (it comes with the word die and shadow die). I then adhered the panel to the card front.

I found some green CS similar to the ink and die-cut the 'thank you' word dies from it 3x, glued them together and then glued in the 'shadow' die-cut holes. The flowers (from the same 'Botannicals' stamp set) were stamped with Waffle Flower inks 'You Said What?', 'New Fish in Pond' and 'Happy Go Lucky'. I stamped them all a few times each to get good coverage. I fussy cut them out and adhered in place, gluing a blue pearl and yellow pearl (from Studio Katia) in the middle. I then glued on some more to finish off.

I'm going to link this to the Simon Says Stamp - Wednesday Challenge where their theme is 'Anything Goes'.

Will also link to the Simon Says Stamp - Monday Challenge where their theme is 'Floral Frenzy'.

You have until Tuesday 25th February to link your projects to The Flower Challenge and I'll be back here on the 15th with another card covered in leaves to give you some more ideas. Look forward to seeing you in the Gallery!!

Take care
Shona