This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!
Hi friends! I’m back today with another project for my spotlight on Simon Says Stamp’s Steel Cardstock. For DieCember, Simon Says Stamp came out with a collection of really beautiful colored cardstock, featuring lots of vivid, color saturated jewel tones as well as some fantastic neutrals like the Steel Cardstock. I find this medium gray cardstock to be absolute perfection for so many color palettes, working beautifully to complement super vivid colors or as a backdrop for more muted colors, like I’ve created for today’s project. When creating white flowers, I find that it is important to allow room for the absence of color; that is, trying to leaves as much of the white cardstock visible as possible. To achieve this, I like to do some visual “reverse psychology,” allowing the colors surrounding the white image to create visual contrast. Let’s get started on the details for my project!
*I have gathered links to all of the products used at the bottom of the post for your convenience, using affiliate links. Thank you for shopping with my links! I truly appreciate your support for my work!*
To start, I stamped the lovely rose arrangement and extra flowers and bud from the Beautiful Friend stamp set using Altenew’s Permanent Gray Mist ink onto some Hammermill cardstock. I then pulled a few markers from the OLO alcohol marker collection: a very pale gray, a grayish aqua, and the Zero marker, also known as the colorless blender. The Zero marker is extremely important for this project, because it softens the edges of the coloring while also allowing that white cardstock to shine through, creating that “white” image. I first laid down that pale grayish aqua in the areas where the shadows would be deepest on my white rose, then blended that out a bit with the almost-colorless pale gray marker, then softened the edge of that coloring with the Zero marker. Now for the first part of the “reverse psychology,” I colored the foliage and smaller blooms using some vivid teal and cornflower blue shades, allowing those bright colors to contrast strongly with the lack of color on the white roses.
After I had finished coloring all of the images, I used the coordinating dies from the Beautiful Friend product suite to die cut each of the images, then selected a marker in a coordinating shade of gray to match the Steel cardstock. I used the brush tip of the marker to color in any white space around the edges of the die cuts, creating even more contrast and allowing the white on the roses to become even more crisp and stark. To go along with the cornflower blue blooms, I also die cut a few Eucalyptus Leaves dies from some coordinating blue glitter cardstock. Before arranging the blooms and extra foliage on the Steel card front, I used a blending brush dedicated to only my Simon White Pigment Ink to blend the delicate pattern on the Crochet Blocks Stencil on the background of the card front. I love the simple, sweet pattern on this stencil; it’s the perfect backdrop for the somewhat shabby-chic rose arrangement!
Before adhering everything with foam and liquid adhesive, I heat embossed some sentiments from the new EZ Strips Birthday stamp set, which stamps lots of sentiments in one fell swoop, creating plenty of sentiments to use both now and later! I heat embossed them using crisp white embossing powder on more Steel cardstock, then used the EZ Strips Rectangles to die cut all of the embossed sentiments with one pass through my die cutting machine. I selected which strips I wanted to use on my card today, then arranged all of the different die cuts on the stenciled background. I used both liquid and foam adhesive to adhere all of the pieces, tucking the sentiment strips amongst the floral images, then added a few Dusk Pawsitively Dazzling Gems for added sparkle!
Well, that’s all for my project today! If you’ve never tried to color white images because it’s a bit intimidating, I encourage you to use this visual “reverse psychology” technique. It really does make a huge difference! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!
Absolutely Stunning card, Emily!!!