Floral Hello

On Day 2 of Online Card Classes' "Mask-erade" class, Jennifer McGuire had a lesson on "Masking a Scene." She used a butterfly die to create her mask, stamping inside the negative space with several little flower stamps. I chose to do something similar, but use a floral die instead.

I die cut my flower shape out of a piece of masking paper, using one of DoCraft's Xcut "Flower Bloom" dies. I stuck the negative of the masking paper onto a piece of white cardstock that I'd cut to 4x5.5". Using some of the stamps from both "Botanicals 2" by Paper Smooches & WPlus9's "Spring Blooms," I filled my cut-out area with images. (I also added a few dots here and there with one of the stamps from Essentials by Ellen's "Bokeh Dots" set.) The inks I used were mostly by Hero Arts: Butter Bar, Bubble Gum, Fresh Peach, Pool, Forever Green, & Green Hills. I also used Colorbox Chestnut Roan ink for the flower centers.

Once I had filled the area with my stamping, it was time for The Big Reveal. I peeled up my mask, revealing a large flower shape filled with smaller floral & leaf images. (In fact, when I showed this card to my mom, she thought that was all one big stamp! She almost wouldn't believe me until I pointed out how difficult it would be to get all those different colors in place.)

I chose my greeting from Hero Arts' "Dauber Bunch" stamp set. I stamped it in Versamark ink, and heat embossed it with Ranger Liquid Platinum embossing powder. To mat the focal panel, I cut a piece of white cardstock to 4.25x5.5", and smooshed Versamark along both long sides. Then I heat embossed that with Liquid Platinum, to tie it in visually with the greeting. Finally, I matted the focal panel with my embossed piece, and adhered the whole thing to an A2 card base. I will be sending this card to Operation Write Home in a couple of months, with my final package. (As a reminder, if you want to send cards to them, the final deadline for all cards is August 1, 2015. You can read more about that here.)

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes"
Operation Write Home's May Challenge: "Embossing" (sponsored by Our Daily Bread Designs)