How to Salvage Your Mistakes with Mother’s Day Tulips for Simon Says Stamp !

This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!

Hi friends! I have a pair of springtime projects today that feature lots of my favorite things: vivid coloring, crisp white space, texture, and vellum. Our tulips are starting to peek through the soil in our landscaping, and I can’t wait to feast my eyes on their lush red blooms! I was inspired to pull out one of my older illustrations for Simon Says Stamp: Mother’s Day Tulips. I did some no-line Copic coloring on this large-scale tulip arrangement, intending to create one card with a very full bouquet of tulips, but I made some mistakes while coloring and ended up making two different cards. Let’s get started with the details on my projects!

When I illustrated the Mother’s Day Tulips stamp set, I wanted to make it large enough that it could work as a focal point for a slimline card, but it also works beautifully for a more standard A2 card size! When I was mentally designing the layout of my card, I wanted to have a colorful die cut popped up on a flat stamped image, creating a veritable field of tulips. I stamped the Mother’s Day Tulips image twice using Contour Ink, offsetting it once to create some variation between the two layers of tulips.

I like to experiment with my Copic markers, mixing and matching from different color families to create really unique color gradients. I particularly like using dark neutral colors, like grays and browns, to add extra intensity to the shadows of my images. Sometimes my experiments work out wonderfully, and sometimes, like on this first project, the dark gray that I selected to add to my shadows was just a touch too dark for my taste. The alcohol ink blends splendidly most of the time, but sometimes if the colors are a bit too far apart, the lighter color will almost bleach the darker color, creating harsh lines and discoloration. On this first image, which I intended to be a background for my dimensional layer, the Toner Gray marker that I selected was just a bit too dark for the smaller areas in the tulip, and so I had issues getting a super smooth blend from one color to the next.

As I worked on the second set of tulips with a lighter gray marker for the shadows, I kept catching glances of my first panel out of the corner of my eye and loved the vibrance and contrast of the coloring. To see if I could salvage the panel rather than throw it away, I pulled out a panel of vellum, laid it over the top of the colored background, and was pleasantly surprised at the effect. The vellum softened the harsh edges of the too-dark gray while still allowing the vibrancy of the pinky red to shine through! I trimmed the vellum panel down so that it allowed 1/2″ to peek out on all sides, then added a crisp white Simple Hello die cut. I added a few sparkling Clear Pawsitively Dazzling Gems. (Also-if you haven’t checked out these new Pawsitively Dazzling Gems from Simon Says Stamp, you’re missing out. They’re glass, not plastic, which makes them feel like luxurious jewels in your hand, and they are so, SO sparkly!)

Since I was able to salvage the first background with the vellum, I decided to use the Mother’s Day Tulips coordinating dies to cut the second finished colored panel. I did not make the same mistake with the dark gray on this image; rather, I used the Toner Gray marker that was one step lighter to add my shadows, and it made a world of difference! I used the Mother’s Day Tulips coordinating dies to die cut the image, and I just adore how detailed these dies are, cutting out the little empty spaces in the center of the floral arrangement to make things as intricate and delicate as possible.

To add interest behind these vivid flowers, I added some texture to my plain white A2 card front with the Garden Spires Embossing Folder. I love that the shadows created by the texture create a such dreamy effect, like a photo that is focused on the foreground and blurry in the background! I popped up the tulip die cut with some foam squares, then die cut the Just A Note die twice from more plain white cardstock. I adhered the dimensional die cut greeting to the tulip die cut with some liquid adhesive, then added a few Clear Pawsitively Dazzling Gems to the card front for some extra sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my projects today! I hope that you find the vellum trick handy to have in your arsenal of crafty tricks in case you make a mistake like I did. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!