Beautiful roses

Good Morning to you all! 

I have got up early so I can get my car to the garage early for it's annual service! So I have taken the opportunity to write a little blog about one of the cards I made for Maria's last show on Hochanda.

 I really loved the rose plate and decided that I did not want tot make a small card but how can I get more roses than the ones on the plate...I set my brain cogs whirring and also my stamping head as I sometimes find that if I think 'If this was a stamp what would I do.' then I can use the plates better.

I had got all the plates out on the table in front of me and I saw the tags border. I also saw the nested square plate and then my brain kicked into action.

I started off by Creating a rectangle using the square and moving the parchment to extend the sides. I made it as big as I could on a piece of A5 parchment leaving enough of an edge so I could prick round it and snip it out.

I then started in the corner with the tag border and chose the small two sizes of tags I did then moved the parchment down and did the next one moving in a diagonal direction. I wanted to end up at the opposite bottom corner. I tilted and turned the tags so that seven would fit in. I then went back to the square plate and did the border. Then using the alphabet on the Groovi plate mate, I added the letters FRIENDS.

Now for the roses. I positioned the parchment over the rose plate and did the first lot of roses making sure I stopped at the lines I already had on the parchment. I moved the parchment and did more roses again avoiding the lines I had already got. I added a few more leaves where I thought they needed to be. 

I created the squares on the border by using the nested squares plate then I added dot by using the ball tool from the back on the soft side of the Groovi mat. I filled the letters in with white work and added some shading to the roses with gentle white work...I didn't want it too white just to make the outsides of the petals lighter as they would be on real roses. When I was happy with this I then set about colouring it.

You all know how mush I love pink....and I could quite happily have done pink roses but I decided to go a different colour and looked at what I had in the way of yellows and oranges. I used a mixture of Spectrum Aqua, Distress markers and whisper pens...all water based and I find work well together on the parchment. They blend OK but don't make the parchment too wet!

I coloured the frames around the letters using brown then pricked using a half moon shaped tool in the bottom of each frame then all around the outside of the rectangular shape I started with. I snipped this out with my new snips that Colin got me for Christmas. I cut a piece of orange card exactly the same size as the parchment then matted this onto a piece of brown card. I attached the parchment to this using bronze coloured brads then stuck this to the card blank.

I was pleased with the final card and I loved the tones the pens gave me.

It would be nice if you could let me know what you think! Would you have chosen a different colour or do you like this tones I chose?

Happy Crafting

Love and hugs xxxx