April Showers Bring May Flowers with Simon Says Stamp: Mother’s Day Gift Suite with Thankful Magnolia!

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

Hi friends! It’s officially May… I’m a little bit in shock at how quickly the year is flying by! I am not sad to see the end of April 2024; we had quite a lot of stressful events taking place last month, of which the biggest was my son breaking his leg. He’s on the mend, now, and we are coming up on some fun events in May that I am really excited about. The crazy weather has also leveled out a little, with lots of April showers bringing an abundance of May flowers! I thought that I would honor the beautiful blooms in the outside world by creating my own card-gardens for a new series for the month of May, using some of the floral stamps I’ve illustrated for Simon Says Stamp over the last few years. Some of the sets have been (sadly) discontinued, but there are still several of them that are available. Over the course of the month of May, I will be sharing inspiration using these stamp sets for the April Showers Bring May Flowers series. First up: Thankful Magnolia!

I love creating coordinating gift suites, and the large floral illustration from Thankful Magnolia is so substantial and detailed that I decided to use it for some framed watercolor artwork, a coordinating Mother’s Day card (with no coloring on it at all), and to adorn the front of one of Simon Says Stamp’s new Black Bubble Mailer envelopes. Coordinating project suites for the win!

For the framed artwork, I heat embossed the large magnolia image from Thankful Magnolia onto a panel of 4″ x 6″ Distress Watercolor Cardstock using Copper embossing powder. I then used Distress Ink Mini cubes in shades of Scattered Straw, Tattered Rose, Victorian Velvet, Bundled Sage, Hickory Smoke to watercolor the image, tapping the cubes on my watercolor palette and picking the color up with my damp paintbrush to apply it to the heat embossed image. To create a very pale magnolia image, I used some visual reverse psychology, painting the area around the main image the dark Hickory Smoke and Victorian Velvet to increase the contrast between the light magnolia and the dark backdrop. (I demonstrate this technique in THIS video.) After I had completed the watercoloring, I splattered some Altenew Titanium White Artists’ Gouache around the image for a bit of artsy flair!

Once my watercoloring had been completed, I placed the painting in an inexpensive frame from the dollar store and embellished it with a pretty white May Arts faux silk ribbon bow! An inexpensive, but heartfelt, gift that any mom would love to receive. I know my mom always loves receiving my artwork!

For the coordinating card, I heat embossed the large image from Thankful Magnolia onto some Hero Arts Vellum using Copper embossing powder. I wanted to create a card that coordinated with, but was not as involved as, the painting and the super smooth embossing on the vellum highlights the details of the image beautifully, even without any extra coloring! I die cut the image using the coordinating die; I love how detailed this die is, cutting out even the interior spaces on the image. So much easier than fussy cutting it.

For the card base, I blended some Victorian Velvet Distress Ink on the bottom left corner of a pale pink A2 card front, then added a shiny frame cut using the A2 Nesting Frames dies from Tonic Rose Platinum foil cardstock, which coordinates beautifully with the copper embossed floral image. I also heat embossed a sentiment from my Mother’s Day Dogwood stamp set using Rose Gold embossing powder on some deep magenta cardstock from my stash, which enhanced the coordinating Fancy Mother die cut, cut from the same magenta cardstock. I adhered the sentiment pieces to the vellum image with some liquid adhesive, then flipped it over and added my foam adhesive behind those solid die cuts. The last step was a few shimmering gems for extra sparkle!

My mom lives a couple of hours from me, and so I know that I will need to mail her gift to her, so I decided to embellish one of the new Black Bubble Mailer envelopes to coordinate with my gift suite. I created my own sticky label by adding some Simon Says Stamp Tear-rific Adhesive Sheets to the back of some thin pink paper (lightweight paper=flush against the envelope and less chance of damage during mailing). I die cut my sticker label using the Nested Ovals dies, then stamped a tone-on-tone Thankful Magnolia image using Victorian Velvet Distress Ink. I used a black pen to add the address (these are not our actual addresses, just for privacy reasons), but I probably would use a thicker black pen or marker to add the address if I were truly going to mail it. An embellished envelope is the perfect way to let the recipient know that the contents are extra special!

Well, that’s all for my projects today! I’m so excited to have an excuse to play with some of my older floral illustrations. I hope you don’t mind indulging me! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy May!