Hi there! Today is a special-ish day for me… it’s my 35th birthday today! This covid-quarantine-birthday with two babies and two medium-sized kiddos is definitely not how I imagined spending my 35th birthday, but we’re gonna make the best of it grilling out and some yummy homemade apple pie! (My hubby makes it for me with extra thick crust. Yummm.) This has been quite a transformative year for me in many ways, including my newfound interest in drawing and stamp illustration! I am so grateful for all of the opportunities I’ve been lucky enough to have over the last year, not the least of which is illustrating six different stamp sets for Honey Bee Stamps! (I’ll link them all at the bottom of the post in case you want to check them out. 😉 ) Today’s card is using one of my newest sets: Darling Dahlias.
I used both watercolors and Copics to color my card sets from last week, so I thought for today’s card, I would do some pencil coloring. The images in the Darling Dahlias set are nice and large and great for use with colored pencils. Let’s get started with the details!

I began by stamping the blooms and foliage on some emerald green cardstock using white pigment ink. I find that the white pigment ink disappears into the pencil coloring quite seamlessly, so I tend to use that for my no-line pencil coloring on colored cardstock.

I love using Caran D’Ache Luminance colored pencils to add really vibrant pencil coloring to my colored card stock. I colored the images, then used the coordinating Honey Cuts to die cut the finished images out.

I stamped an emerald green background panel using the Farmhouse Check background stamp and some darker green ink, then arranged the Darling Dahlias in a swag and adhered them on the checkered background panel using foam adhesive. I added a greeting using sentiment dies from the new Slimline Blanket Sentiments and some gems for sparkle.
Now, to celebrate my newest sets and my birthday, I thought I’d do a giveaway! I will select three winners to receive one of my stamp sets from Honey Bee Stamps. All you have to do to win is be a blog follower (either via email or WordPress) and leave me a comment telling me whether you love birthday cake or pie better! I’m sorry international friends… with the way international postage is these days, I’m only doing continental US for this giveaway. I will leave the giveaway open until October 6, 2020.
Good luck! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!
