Petal Pink Cardstock – ConstantlyCreating.Me

Hello there! Welcome back to my blog. I made this card last week when I spotted my remaining scrap (less than a 6×6) of this pattern of floral-patterned paper in the Perennial Essence Designer Series Paper pack, #149100 (which is currently on the last-chance list for $8.09! Go get one!). My scrap was just so pretty that I had to use it up. I looked up the colors in the pack (Balmy Blue, Blackberry Bliss, Blueberry Bushel, Calypso Coral, Crushed Curry, Flirty Flamingo, Mossy Meadow, Old Olive, Petal Pink, So Saffron, Whisper White) and picked Petal Pink for my card base. Then I reached for my matching vellum (Perennial Essence Vellum Cardstock, #149101) and picked the Old Olive color. (The vellum pack also has Petal Pink and So Saffron.)

To decide how much of the scrap I wanted to use and where to cut it, I first stamped my sentiment (from the Floral Blossoms stamp set, #151457, which is carrying over) in Old Olive ink, #146090, so that I could narrow down the dimensions and have more exact placement. I knew I wanted to mat the floral image to give it distinction from the Petal Pink card base, since there is so much Petal Pink in this particular scrap of DSP. (Isn’t it pretty? I always love a good watercolor image.)

After cutting the vellum, I then decided to emboss the Old Olive with the Subtle Embossing Folder, #151775, to have a small pattern that would complement rather than draw attention away from the flowers. When I flipped over the vellum to put some adhesive on the back that would be behind the flowers, that’s when things changed. I stopped mid-glue because I suddenly realized how cool the back side looked. The embossing—or, rather, the debossing—made the vellum turn kind of white with the creasing! Well, then I was torn; I liked both. I decided to take pictures of each side to show you and also to be able to make a decision—sometimes I see things differently when I view a photo I’ve taken, even if I’m the same distance from the image and looking at it in real life. I’m curious to see which side you like best. Leave me a comment and let me know which side—or which card—you would have gone with. 🙂

untitled design — Green debossed “whiter” side

by connie troyer constantlycreating.me — Green embossed vellum, colored side up

untitled design-1 — The way my original idea would have looked with the green vellum pointing up

I decided that I definitely liked the whiter side up and set about doing a double layer of matting to really hone in on the vellum (while still not taking away from the flowers). Pleased with my choice, I glued the now-white vellum to the larger unembossed Olive Olive vellum and the floral piece to the other smaller piece of Old Olive vellum, for two different mats. I think double matting just gives an elegant, intentional, thoughtful look to the thing being matted. I do this in my scrapbooking at times too, to help feature certain photos. When I look at the above picture now—the green-embossed side up, without the mats—it just feels so much plainer to me. (Of course, I would have added embellishments to it too.)

untitled design-2 — Interior of card (so far)

So there you have it, readers! Let me know what you think about this card and what you would have chosen. Clickable links for the products I’ve used are below.

If you don’t already have a demonstrator and would like to receive a free catalog from me, submit your name and address in my contact form and I’ll send one right out to you (remember, the catalog goes live on June 3!). I’m also working on my first product share offering and will post details about that soon in case anyone wants to buy in. (If you’re not familiar with a product share, it’s a sampling of new product from the new catalog—though I’ll probably also have an “old product” version too, in case some want everything. That way you get a little bit of all the fun DSP, embellishments, and ribbon without the gigantic cost of buying it all individually. So stay tuned for details on that!)

Thanks again for stopping by today. Let me know if I can help you!

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My host code from now until the the end of June is GCXZKQT9, which you can add to your order before you check out. As a reminder, if you order $250 worth before tax and shipping are added in, don’t add the host code since you’ll be prompted to put in your own rewards—your own little party! And anyone who orders $50 before tax and shipping gets a free gift of up to $8 from me, along with a reward point toward a free $40 order from me to you. When you collect 8 reward points, you’ll just need to tell me what you want and I’ll have it shipped out to you, as my thanks for being my customer. 🙂 Contact me if you have any questions!

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Product List

Whew! That’s a long blog title. (And I didn’t even add all the stamp sets!) Maybe you know by now that my preferred style is lots of details and fuss—complication is somehow my specialty. I’ve used all current Stampin’ Up products in my card today, and there are quite a few. Thank you so much for coming to my post! Thumbnails of the products I used will be at the end of post, and clicking them will take you to my online store for more details.

The theme for Stamp with Amy K’s blog hop for this month is “love.” Well, I have a “love” for all things France, so when I was thinking about current Stampin’ Up product I already own that I could create with, of course I turned to the Eiffel Tower. And flowers. I love flowers too. They’re my go-to any time of year. I didn’t have anyone particularly in mind when I created this card; it will likely go to my local gift shop for sale soon. The idea of it came to me while I was driving the other day. The background has changed since, but ideas do that in this craft room. 🙂

I started with an A2 (4.5″ x 5.5″) Thick Whisper White card base and then eyeballed and cut a slightly smaller separate piece of regular Whisper White for a layer on the top. The margin difference is between 1/8″ and 1/16″ because one was too big and the other was too small. I dry-embossed this separate piece with the Subtle 3D Embossing Folder first in one direction, and then I flipped the paper and embossed it in the other direction, which gives it a crosshatched look. I tucked a piece of 1/4″ Petal Pink Metallic-Edge Ribbon around the edges slightly higher than the middle, gluing them on the back side, and then glued my embossed piece down to the card base. (Well, technically, I did a lot of the steps backward, including that part, but do as I say, not as I did!)

The focal part of my card front is the large flower stamp from the Forever Blossoms Cling Stamp Set, surrounded by an embossed die-cut made from the Heirloom Frames Dies and Heirloom Frames 3D Embossing Folders, with the Eiffel Tower stamp from the Parisian Beauty Cling Stamp Set and die-cut flowers from the Cherry Blossoms Dies offset to the side.

I knew I wanted to use Alcohol Blends on the flowers and leaves, but I don’t like coloring large sections with the Blends and making lines, so I felt like watercoloring the background would be best for me. I used the Balmy Blue watercolor pencil in the Assortment 2 pack and an Aqua Painter. (Truthfully, I forgot to color the background until after I’d already distractedly glued the piece to the back of the oval once my flowers were done, so don’t do that. Color it all first; then cut and glue.) Since we can use Memento Tuxedo Black to hold in the colors of the alcohol markers BUT Memento is water-based and will run when touched with water during watercoloring, I decided I’d better heat-emboss some embossing powder on the image after stamping with VersaMark so that I could do both techniques. I’d wanted to try out Stampin’ Up’s new Shimmer White and Shimmer Black Stampin’ Emboss Powders anyway.

I’m actually really impressed with those new embossing powders. I didn’t expect to see the holographic flecks in them, and that feature turns out some neat highlights. The Shimmer White is, of course, white when embossed, but there’s also a mix of silver and holographic flecks that don’t meld together when heated, unlike the white and black colors themselves. And the Shimmer Black includes flecks of silver, magenta, green, blue, and something yellowy that sit subtly on top of the black. The ones in the black are very hard to pick up in the lighting when showing a card, but they’re fun to see. After I heat-embossed the Eiffel Tower with the Shimmer Black, I think my jaw actually fell open—it looked like it was sparkling with diamonds!

When I was working on the oval, I had trouble getting the embossing perfectly centered in the die-cut, and that bothered me—and it also took up more of the card front that way, room I needed—so I trimmed off the excess around the crimped part. It lays flatter now anyway without the extra border edge. Once I had that done, I used it to figure out how I wanted to show my flowers inside it. They are stamped at an angle. I actually had a different angle chosen, but I didn’t glue it in the same way I had set it, so watch that if you do it. Mark a place at the top so you don’t twist it too far to the side. I cut a small section of Shimmery White Cardstock for the flowered piece, which you can see some of in the blue background in closeups. This card is quite shimmery everywhere you look!

To color the flowers, I used my Dark Petal Pink, Light Granny Apple Green, and Dark Granny Apple Green Alcohol Blends, as well as the Color Lifter. I tried to work with the Ivory too, but I had to lift the color right out of it because it felt too dark on the buds I colored. (I used to have a Light Petal Pink Blend and wanted to use it, but at the last show where I was a vendor, the cap didn’t get put back on correctly and I didn’t catch it until it had already dried out. So I have to order a new one.) When I colored the flowers, I went over the centers and extended the color some with the Dark Petal Pink first, then lightly went over everything with the same marker, and then took the Color Lifter to the outside edges of the flowers or buds. I would have also liked to have left some white on the flowers to look more like the DSP in the Parisian Blossoms Specialty Designer Series Paper, but it just didn’t work out that way. The embossing on the flowers and leaves is really where all the shading and shadowing is, so it felt more like reverse coloring as I worked with it. There’s not a lot of space in the flowers that isn’t embossed. I did color right over the embossing, and it does not rub off (though I did not intentionally test that when it was wet).

The Parisian Beauty stamp set is one I won with my Prize Patrol number at November’s OnStage conference, and I hadn’t ordered the matching Parisian Dies yet because I already have a Bigz Eiffel Tower die and several stamp sets having to do with France. In my mind, I saw the SU die-cut at the side of the card and thought I had bought the set until I went looking and remembered. Stampin’ Up’s die-cut is much prettier than the other die I have, so I will be ordering the Parisian Dies after all. For today’s card, though, I had to fussy-cut the stamped/embossed image.

I used the Cherry Blossom dies for the flowers on top of the Eiffel Tower. The stamens and star center were cut out of Champagne Foil and the flowers themselves out of Petal Pink cardstock. I actually doubled the littlest blossom, sandwiching the foil in between to make sure it stayed where it was supposed to. I wanted the blossoms to curl up a bit and had to use the tip of my Tombow Mono Liquid Glue to get the curves I imagined, instead of my large ball tool that was “somewhere.” The dies emboss curving lines in the flowers when cut, as well.

I popped up the Eiffel Tower with Mini Dimensionals to help the height of the knot at the edge of the card, so some of the cherry blossoms on top of it are glued flat and some have been half glued flat and half popped up. The littlest blossom actually has two half Mini Dimensionals at the right and is glued on top of the others otherwise. I knotted a small bow with the 1/4″ Petal Pink Metallic-Edge Ribbon (the last of my sample from OnStage!) and used glue dots under it, on top of the ribbon that was wrapped around to the back, to keep it in place.

To finish the card front, I used the “Always thinking of you” sentiment from the Very Versailles Cling stamp set and stamped it in Jet Black Staz-On ink on a scrap of Thick Whisper White cardstock (with no embossing either way). The Staz-On ink seems darker than the Tuxedo Black Memento ink, and since I had such a dark Eiffel Tower, I didn’t want to go halfway on my ink. To my surprise and delight, my Simply Shammy removed the Staz-On ink from my stamp with just a little scrubbing. Now I don’t have to drag out the pungent Staz-On Cleaner and do the whole paper towel mess! Hooray!

I also used my new Paper Trimmer and even the new Mini Cutter to trim up the sentiment scrap and the first version of my Subtle-embossed piece. The Mini Cutter is only available to demonstrators and those who become demonstrators during Sale-a-Bration, so if you want one, you’ll need to sign up to get it and some other goodies (but I promise it’s worth it!).

The inside of the card is hiding an oops, but I got a lot more creative with what you see versus what I had, so I’m happy about that mistake. I used the largest of the Painted Labels Dies to cut my “label” for the sentiment out of Sahara Sand cardstock. I stamped the “Sending All My Love” sentiment from the Last a Lifetime Cling Stamp Set in Jet Black Staz-On, using my Stamparatus. And then I glued more Champagne Foil to three more blossoms of various sizes (star centers and stamens, both) to two corners of the label. I did not curve those blossoms. 🙂

All in all, I’m pretty happy with this card. I hope you like it too. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think or what you would have done differently—or any questions you may have. Just for fun, I’ve included a picture of the “clean and simple” version of this card to show you what it would look like without the flowers. Somehow it’s a very different feel! Nothing was glued down yet when I took the photo.

We have a very talented team creating for you today, so please “hop” around to the others on this list to see what they made! If you hit the “Previous” button, you’ll go back to Mary Deatherage’s blog, or you can go “Next” to Akiko Sudano’s offering. Both women create amazing cards! Or you can skip around with the links below—you’ll find many you like. 🙂

Karen Ksenzakovic – https://wp.me/paaNf4-1uG
Shirley Gentry – https://stampinwithshirleyg.com/?p=10221
Mary Deatherage – https://wp.me/p5snyt-aZ2
Connie Troyer – You are here!
Akiko Sudano – https://wp.me/paOv8E-KT
Jaimie Babarczy – https://wp.me/p79UhD-3wt
Karen Finkle – https://karenscardkorner.blogspot.com/2020/01/stampin-up-parisian-beauty-for-amys.html
Sue Prather – https://wp.me/p5yitZ-1I8
Leslie Larkin – https://leslielarkin.com/heart-to-heart-bundle-for-amys-inkin-krew-team-blog-hop/
Amy Koenders – https://wp.me/p2SFwf-idu

And if you are interested in the products I used on this card, I’ve added them to the next list, and the thumbnails are direct links to my online store for more information or purchasing.

If you wish to purchase something from my online store, please use the host code WAA2PGYR during checkout. Orders of $50 before tax and shipping also gets you a free gift of your choice worth up to $8, from me to you as my thanks. 🙂 (You’ll also get a free Sale-a-Bration item from Stampin’ Up with every order of $50 before tax and shipping!) If you’re interested in becoming a demonstrator and want to sign up with a great time, I’d love to have you join mine—and Sale-a-Bration is the best time to do it! Recruits who join before March 31, 2020, will receive the brand-new (only available here) Mini Cutter (which is a guillotine-style trimmer), a 6″x6″ sampler pack of Designer Series Paper (48 sheets of most of the DSP from the Mini catalog), a free stamp set of their choice, $125 worth of items for $99, and more. I’ve never regretted it!