Hello beautiful

Today I'm sharing I card I made for the February Essentials by Ellen Pin-Sights Challenge.  The board this month is gorgeous!

The thing that stood out to me the most was the beautiful bucket of flowers.  I really love red and purple together, so that was my starting inspiration for my card.

I decided to use a technique that I saw on Melissa Phillips blog, LilyBean Paperie.  Here's the LINK if you'd like to check out her gorgeous cards!  To start my card I die cut the largest flower die from Mondo Magnolia using a piece of scrap paper to use as a stencil.  I taped my stencil onto some Tim Holtz watercolor paper and used my ink blending tool and several inks to apply random color.  The red is Barn Red distress ink and I used 2 shades of purple that I got from Club Scrap years ago so I'm not even sure who they're made by.  When I was happy with the colors I added some water droplets.  Next I used a text stamp from Waltzingmouse Stamps and Barn Red distress ink and stamped on top of the flower (with the stencil still in place).  After removing the stencil I added some splatters using both the red and purple inks mixed with some water.

To make the vellum flower I die cut the middle flower shape from Mondo Magnolia from vellum paper and then embossed the center portion of the flower on the vellum with white embossing powder.  The word "hello" is from Mondo Magnolia.  The die cut "beautiful", and the hearts, were cut using Concord & 9th's Beautiful You dies.  It's hard to see in this picture but after I cut the shapes I coated them with Versa Mark ink and white embossing powder and embossed them.  I wanted the white to match the white in the center of the flower.  And one of the things I love best about this card is the cool border die which is from Sugar Pea Designs.  This is my first purchase from that company.  I saw a card made by Amy T. using this die and I had to have it.  What I love about it is that it cuts an A2 card front just as you see here.  So many times I want a very subtle border around my cards and this fits the bill perfectly!  I'm sure you'll be seeing it on a lot of my cards.

That's all from me for now.  I'm headed out of town in 2 days for a week at my Mom's in GA so I won't be on the blog very much for the next week or so other than with my scheduled DT posts.  See you when I get back!