Hello

Ellen Hutson's August Essentials by Ellen Pin-Sights challenge features the colors hot pink, lemonade, and jadite on the mood board, among other images. I decided to use tints of those colors in the flower on my card.

My design inspiration came from the "hello" card on this post by Paulina of Pretty Pink Posh. I began by stamping the flower from "Mondo Magnolia," designed by Julie Ebersole for the Essentials by Ellen line, in Versamark ink onto a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper. I then heat embossed that with Ranger Liquid Platinum embossing powder. After determining the spacing, I die cut the panel into several strips, using the "Pocket Border" die by Pretty Pink Posh. I made sure to number the back of each strip as I cut, so I could reassemble them without any difficulty!

To color the flower, I taped the sections together on my non-stick craft mat, and colored each part with an Inktense pencil. I used a blue-green for the middle, yellow for the two strips adjacent to that, and pink for the top & bottom strips. When I had the color down, I separated the strips, and blended each color out with my detail water brush. This way, I was able to keep the shading pretty consistent across the image, without getting any of the colors where I didn't want it.

After I finished the coloring and let the strips dry, I mounted all the strips to a piece of white cardstock. The stitched edges that the "Pocket Border" die had left bothered me, because there was no faux stitching around the outside edges of the panel. So I ended up die cutting the panel with the largest of the "Large Stitched Rectangle" dies by Lawn Fawn. That created faux stitch lines around the entire panel, which made me much  happier!

For the greeting, I wanted to tie it in with the embossing on the flower. But I didn't want to put the heat-embossed "hello" (from "Mondo Magnolia") on a piece of white cardstock, since the card was so light already. So I tried something I've never done before. I smooshed Versamark on a piece of white cardstock, and heat embossed that whole piece with Liquid Platinum. When that cooled, I stamped the greeting on that with Versamark, and sprinkled Recollections Snow embossing powder over that. I melted the Snow powder with my heat gun, and was pleasantly surprised that the white didn't melt into the platinum! Finally, I cut that into a banner shape, die cut the right side with the "Large Stitched Rectangle" to get the faux stitching there as well, and glued it on the card front, before mounting the panel onto a white A2 card base.

I'm also entering this card in Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes" challenge.