Where Creativity Meets C9: Florals!

The 9th of each month means a new challenge for Where Creativity Meets C9. This month’s Where Creativity Meets C9 challenge is right up my alley. Florals. Be still my flower-loving heart. And Concord and 9th has some fabulous florals from which to choose…. this is going to be funnnn!!

For my project, I’ve chosen to work with one of my all-time favorite Concord and 9th floral sets: Hello Lovely. This set looks incredible in all coloring mediums. When I need to watercolor to just relax (my minions are in full scale “threenager” mode recently, and some days Mommy needs a massive break.), this is the image I pull out. I decided to do some “black magic” with it today. No-line coloring has been my favorite technique recently, and so I thought I would try it on some black card stock. I started by stamping the beautiful bouquet from Hello Lovely onto some black card stock using white pigment ink. The trick to getting beautiful, vibrant color on black cardstock, from what I’ve learned, is to lay down a layer of white colored pencil first, then add your colored pencils over the top. After you add in the color, go back with the blender pencil and blend the shading to make it more seamless. The white beneath the color does dilute the vibrancy of the colors a bit, but that just means that you have to choose some brighter colors. 🙂

After I had colored all of the pretty flowers, I decided to do a very subtle greeting, and so chose to do a dimensional die cut from the center. I started by die cutting the “beautiful” die from the very center of the colored bouquet. (There may have been some sweating and nail biting as I was cutting this out… colored pencils take forever lol!) I die cut the same “beautiful” three more times from yellow cardstock, the same color of which would end up being matted around the edge of the black panel. I glued them all together, then inlaid the dimensional die cut within the  die cut in the center.

The final touch was to add some pretty, buttery-yellow sequins to fill out the bouquet.  I love this “black magic” technique. It looks fantastic on other colors of card stock, too. I used it on pale blue card stock in this blog post, and I think the pink just really pops off of the page, don’t you! So many fun techniques that you can do with colored pencils.

Now, it’s your turn! You have until May 29 to create a project using one of Concord and 9th’s gorgeous array of floral stamps and link it up to our InLinkz on the challenge page. One lucky winner will be awarded a $25 shopping spree at Concord and 9th, generously supplied by our sponsors- Concord and 9th! Another entry will be chosen to be a guest designer on an upcoming challenge. Have fun, and good luck! Can’t wait to see the entries!