Get Well Bouquet

I recently found out that the mother of the executive director of Operation Write Home, Sandy Allnock, had fallen and has been in rehab. Apparently several card makers who had heard about this before (I assume from Sandy's blog) had sent her mom cards. Sandy gave a Situation Report about OWH on YouTube the other day, and mentioned this. She said that, if anyone else wanted to send a card, they could send it to her, and she will give them to her mom when she sees her at the end of this month. So, I decided to do just that.

The inspiration for my card came from this post by Nichol Magouirk. I borrowed her ideas for the bouquet in the vellum mason jar with the greeting on the front, and the partially stenciled background.

I used a mason jar stamp in my collection to stamp on vellum using Versamark ink. I heat embossed that with Ranger Super Fine Detail White embossing powder, and fussy cut it out. For the greeting, I scanned the stamp image into my computer, and used the scanned image as a guide to format the text in Photoshop so it would be curved. I printed it onto a piece of white cardstock that I'd colored by blending Squeezed Lemonade Distress ink over it. Then I marked the cutting lines, cut it out, and glued it to the vellum jar.

For the bouquet, I used several stamps from Hero Arts' "Dauber Bunch" set. I stamped them on watercolor paper using Distress inks in Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed, Seedless Preserves, Vintage Photo (for the flower centers), and Mowed Lawn for the greenery. I then went over the flowers with my water brush, to blend the ink in with a lighter shade of the color I'd stamped in. I cut out all the flowers and leaf clusters. Finally, I lightly marked where the jar would go on my card front panel, and stamped stems within that area directly on the card front.

I used the Tim Holtz "Latticework" layering stencil from Stamper's Anonymous for the stenciled area. I taped it down over my card front, and smeared Golden Light Molding Paste over it, keeping the edges somewhat "rough" as in Nichol's card, & being careful not to go over where the jar would go.

After the paste dried, I began assembling the card. I ran the vellum jar piece through my Xyron machine, to apply an even coat of adhesive to the back, so no adhesive spots would show through the vellum. I stuck down all but the very top of the jar onto the card front, over where I'd stamped the stems. Then I placed & glued down my flowers and leaves, sticking some of the leaves under the top of the jar. After everything was glued down, I poked holes at each end where I wanted the twine to go "around" the top of the jar. Then I threaded pink bakers twine through the holes, and taped the ends on the back. I tied a bow with the same twine, and glued it in place with Ranger Matte Multi Medium.

While the Multi Medium dried, I cut my card base to be a 5x7" finished size. I scored and folded the cardstock, then inked around the front with Picked Raspberry, to give it a pop of color. I finished by rounding the corners of the card front and base with my 3/8" Corner Chomper, and adhering the front to the base.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes"
a2z Scrapbooking Blog's "Encouragement"