This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!
Hi friends! I am back today with an extra large project featuring some extra large dies from Simon Says Stamp’s new Celebrate release. If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you will most likely have seen me use frames on my cards. I think die cut frames are the most perfect back drop upon which you can build a floral bouquet. They’re also marvelous for scene-building; I find building scenes with critters and such rather intimidating, lacking much imagination for creating tableaus for the stamped creatures, and so minimizing the amount of space that I have to cover by containing my scene within a frame helps to make that process infinitely simpler. I love the nested frame dies that Simon Says Stamp has recently released, first in A2 Nesting size and most recently in A7 Nesting size. I created this mammoth card with lots and lots of floral and foliage dies to create a beautiful bouquet backed by a textured frame. Let’s get started with the details!
I started my project by trimming down a panel of A7 Hammermill cardstock, then used a blending brush to blend the new Pawsitively Saturated Ink Trio 25 in a vibrant ombré down the front of the card. I tend to do at least two layers of color whenever I am blending an ombré background like this to ensure that the individual colors blend smoothly into each other.
I knew that I wanted to create an ethereal, textured background featuring the new Floating Flowers Embossing Folder and the new A7 Nesting Frames dies. I die cut the A7 Nesting Frames from some super sparkly navy blue glitter paper, then ran a panel of silver pearl vellum through my die cutting machine with the Floating Flowers Embossing Folder. I selected one of the sparkly frames and trimmed the vellum down to be proportionally similar to the frame, allowing it to be slightly larger than the frame. I adhered the frame in the center of the blended card, hiding the adhesive on the back of the solid frame die cut so that it did not mar the sheer pearlescent vellum.
To adorn my frame and textured background, I die cut the Etched Peony Blossom, Blossom Vine, Lady’s Mantle, and Lush Leaves die from Hammermill cardstock, then used OLO Markers to add color to the individual die cuts, keeping the colors nice and cool to complement the vibrant blue ombré background. For the “white” peony, I used a pale BV marker to add some shadows, then used the colorless Zero marker to blend out the harsh edges. This method adds just a hint of shadow to the individual petals, creating some contrast between the shadowed areas and the white petals.
For the greeting, I heat embossed some of the sentiments from Splendid Sentiments onto deep navy blue cardstock using white embossing powder and trimmed them down with my trimmer. I also die cut the Splendid die from some more navy blue glitter paper, tucking the sentiment pieces amongst my floral bouquet. A smattering of sparkling
finished the project off!
Well, that’s all for my project today! I love creating super sized projects like this. It’s fun to get out of the A2 box sometimes, right? Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!