Hydrangea Hugs & Kisses

This week's sketch by May Flaum in Camp Scrap is one she calls "square in a square." Granted, I used an oval in a rectangle, but the design principle is the same.

I began by stamping Hero Arts' "Hydrangea" stamp onto a piece of watercolor paper, using Ranger Archival Jet Black ink. The Spellbinders oval die I chose to use was not quite large enough to cut around the whole image, so I decided to use the "out of the box" die cutting technique. I laid my die over the image where I wanted to cut, then made small tick marks where the die crossed the sides of the bottom leaves. Then I trimmed around the ends of those leaves with my scissors, stopping at the tick marks. When I put the die over the image to cut it, I made sure those leaf sections stuck out above the die, so they would not get cut off. So most of the image remains on the die cut oval, but those little sections stick out. Hence the name, "out of the box."

I colored the hydrangea with Inktense pencils and water. After that, I inked around the edges of the oval with Faded Jeans Distress ink. For the banner, I heat embossed one of the greetings from this stamp set on a piece of white cardstock using Ranger Super Fine Detail White embossing powder. Then I die cut it using a banner die by Spellbinders, and blended more Faded Jeans ink over that.

I used one of the patterned papers from the Prima "Botanical Collection" 6x6" pad for the background. I glued the hydrangea piece on that, and then glued down the banner. I poked holes in the end of the banner, and inserted two Recollections silver heart brads. Then I mounted the whole front panel to an A2 card base.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Virginia's View Challenge #5: Die Cutting
A Blog Named Hero's Challenge #47: Color It In
Sweet 'n Sassy Stamp's Friday Challenge: Big Blooms