Pink Dahlia

Our Daily Bread Designs is having a color challenge on their blog this week. They posted this color palette, and challenged participants to create a card using 3 or more of those colors:

I decided to use their "Dahlia" stamp, with kind of a variation on the triple-stamping technique. (A variation, mostly because I forgot how to do it the "right" way! LOL) I began by stamping the flower on a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper that I'd cut with a Spellbinders "Standard Circles LG" die, in Colorbox Putty Archival dye ink. I then painted it with three shades of Alizarin Crimson watercolor. I wasn't going for a photorealistic effect with the painting; more of an overall ombre look.

After I dried the flower with my heat tool, I used my craft knife to cut out the center portion, then a slightly larger "ring" of petals. I die cut another circle from pink cardstock, and backed the remaining piece with that, so I'd have a surface to glue my sections to. I glued 3 layers of pink cardstock to the back of each of the sections I'd cut out, making sure they did not show around the edges. Because I'm sending this card to Operation Write Home, I could not use a lot of dimension, hence the cardstock layers instead of foam tape. After I glued the layers on, I glued my sections back in place, in the middle of the bottom layer. The layers provide a bit of lift, but still keep it thin enough to be easy to mail.

Once I had all that done, the rest of the card came together in a snap. My design inspiration came from Operation Write Home's Sketch #74. I used a pink and green plaid patterned paper scrap that was on my desk, and adhered a strip of a green polka dot paper to it. I ran a piece of dark green cardstock through my Grand Calibur, with the "Berry Swirls" embossing folder by Sizzix. Then I adhered my strips to that, and, after inking around the focal piece with Worn Lipstick Distress ink, I glued that to the card front. Since there was really no room left for a greeting, I'm sending this in to OWH as a "thinking of you" card. (That category is kind of a catch-all, including cards with no greetings.) In the end, it really makes it more versatile, since the hero who decides to use it can write pretty much any type of message inside. All that was left to do was mount it to a white A2 card base, and this card was done!