Hi friends! I have had the distinct pleasure of illustrating several stamp sets for Simon Says Stamp, and the Lisianthus stamp set is one of my absolute favorites. These fluffy blooms look like a cross between a rose and a peony, two of the prettiest flowers in existence (in my opinion, anyway!). I’d never seen any in real life, just in photos, and was always enchanted with them. A few weeks ago, my husband very sweetly brought me a bouquet of these gorgeous blooms from a local grower, and my obsession was renewed!! I immediately set out to create an end-of-summer-beginning-of-fall card with a more autumnal color palette, featuring deep magenta and vivid plum as the two main colors. As frequently happens in my craft room, I ended up with enough components to make two separate projects, but I’m not complaining! Let’s get started with the details!

When I started stamping the Lisianthus stamp, I stamped a background pattern on a piece of 5×7 cardstock as well as a separate Lisianthus on a separate piece of cardstock, intending to color all of the images and use them on one card. That ended up looking a bit too busy for my taste, so I created two different cards!

For my first project, I stamped a background pattern on a panel of 5×7 Hammermill cardstock using Intense Black ink from Hero Arts. I then colored the images using Copic markers in a vivacious magenta, lovely jade green, and delicate lavender color palette. I used a very dark maroon and black Copic to color the background, as well, and I just love the subtleties of the maroon and black blending into each other! The warm maroon makes the black a little less stark and, in my opinion, more autumnal! I trimmed the panel down slightly and matted with an ever-so-slightly larger panel of Dragonfruit cardstock from Concord & 9th.

To create a shiny frame around my meticulously-colored blooms, I trimmed down a panel of Tonic Purple Rain cardstock to 5×7, then mounted the colored panel with it’s vivid pink mat in the center. I added a simple, pale celery green die cut Fancy Thinking of You, cut twice and adhered together to create a dimensional die cut greeting. A few coordinating pale celery green gems finished everything off and added some sparkle!

The second project makes use of the standalone Lisianthus that I colored with the intention of adding it to the colored panel, but decided that it would do better as a focal point on a separate project. After I had finished coloring the image and cut it out with the coordinating die, I used the RV99 marker to color around the edge of the die cut. I knew I wanted to have a deep maroon background, and taking away that white edge makes the vivid and bold color palette that much more impactful! I trimmed down an A2 panel of some more Purple Rain cardstock and ran it through my die cutting machine using Simon Says Stamp’s Leaf Tumble embossing folder. If you haven’t tried embossing folders with metallic or mirror cardstock, this is your sign to do it… the results are absolutely exceptional.

I mounted my vivid pink Lisianthus die cut floral spray on the embossed mirror card front using foam adhesive. I then die cut the Fancy Thanks die from some more of that lovely celery green cardstock that complements the jade green eucalyptus leaves so beautifully. Again, I cut the die cut sentiment twice from the pale green cardstock and adhered them together to create a bit of extra height for the greeting to allow it to stand out even more from the bold background. Finally, I added a few more green gems for sparkle!
Well, that’s all for my projects today! I am getting these last few gasps of bright, summery colors in now, because fall and winter crafting will be full of muted tones, traditional red and green, metallics, and icy pastels, and I am so ready for it! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!
