Simon Says Stamp Stamptember Blog Party!

STAMPtember is officially in full swing, and we’re celebrating with a blog party! If you’re new to STAMPtember: September is Simon Says Stamp‘s birthday month, so the entire month is filled with fabulous releases, celebrations, prizes, challenges… good, clean, inky fun (and prizes!) for an entire month!! I am so thrilled to have illustrated two of the sets that were released during yesterday’s introductory release:  Floral Frames and Butterfly Ranunculus. I have a previous blog post with some watercolored projects using these new sets, which you can check out HERE. Today’s post again features the Butterfly Ranunculus set, this time with Copic markers! I have a video that you can watch below or HERE on YouTube.

In my cardmaking, I am all about making things as seamless and coordinated as possible. To that end, the white edge on die cut images drives me a little nuts when I am working with a vibrant, saturated, colorful background. I recently saw Dawn from Wplus9 use a pale blue Copic marker around her images before die cutting, and I thought that it would translate well to other colors, too! The beautiful Shamrock cardstock from Hero Arts is such a stunning shade of green, and it reminded me of beautiful brocade fabrics, with intense emerald silk for the background and brilliant blue embroidery. Monochromatic, but not really monochromatic, if you know what I mean. I just had to channel that inspiration into a card!

I began by stamping all of the images from the Butterfly Ranunculus set using Hero Arts Intens-ified Black ink onto some white, Copic-friendly cardstock. I used G07 Copic marker to color a halo around the edge of the images, making sure to extend far enough that the entire edge would be green when die cut. I then colored the images, using BG49, BG53, BG01, B00, B000 for the flower and T7, BG78, G28, G09 for the foliage.

Because I wanted to keep the flower a very light shade of blue, I colored the petals first with the four lightest shades of aqua, then added touches of BG49 wherever the shadows would be deepest, blending them out with the lighter shades to get a smooth blend. A little goes a long way with the darker shades, so don’t add too much, because it’s basically impossible to remove once you put the ink on the paper!

Once I had my flowers colored and die cut, I cut a Nested Domed Arch from the Shamrock cardstock, running it through my die cut machine once more with the Detail Mandala Plate from Simon Says Stamp. This extra step adds just a touch of subtle interest and texture to the background of my flowers. I adhered the domed arch to an A2 Shamrock card base using foam tape, then arranged the colored flowers, adhering them with lots of foam tape, sometimes in double layers to add extra height. I heat embossed a greeting from Butterfly Ranunculus onto a strip of Shamrock cardstock using silver embossing powder, finally adding a smattering of Mirrored Mint pearls for some shine!

Well, that’s all for my project today. To celebrate the beginning of STAMPtember, we have a scavenger hunt of all kinds of great freebies that you can receive with your order!

Enter code EH5M427Q at checkout to receive the darling Party Like a Puffin stamp set free with your purchase of $30 or more! You can also check out the other Blog Party participants to see what other kinds of fabulous free gifts you can receive in addition to utterly amazing inspiration!

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy STAMPtember!!