Flowers and more flowers

Time for our monthly challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes are Flower Power and Feature a Creature, I am thinking both will be popular choices.

All of my cards feature new stamps from the So Special 2016 Spring Release from Penny Black, I know I am biased when it comes to floral and Penny Black but I think this release has some of the most beautiful stamps I have seen recently. So I was super excited when my deliveries from Penny Black and John at PB stamps arrived a couple of weeks ago.

My top card is my Penny Black DT creation using the beautiful Geranium called Light Touch. It's a pretty large stamp and with the pretty Butterfly needs little more with it.................the Butterfly is my creature. I machine stiched the edges of a piece of Fabriano card, inked the stamp with distress markers, spritzed liberally with water and stamped to the left of the card.

Once dry I flicked some watery colour using the same ink around the image.........to do this I simply scribble a little ink from a distress marker onto an acrylic block, water it down and using a fine paint brush flick the watery colour onto the card..............if the colour is too intense for what you want just dab lightly with a piece of kitchen towel to tone it down. The sentiment is also Penny Black and I simply finished the card with some matting and layering and pearls.

I made a set of cards for my first Stamping Sensations offering using another of the new Penny Black stamps called Bejeweled, I think this looks rather like a Chrysanthemum. I used exactly the same inking process as the card at the top and just finished of each one slightly differently, one has flicks of colour added, one some soft stenciling and the third a border drawn in with a pencil.

My third piece is a tent card, I like this shape for a change and using an A3 piece of card and a score board you can makes two nice sized cards much cheaper than buying ready scored packs. I covered the front and inside with Be Creative Vintage Collage papers and gave the edges a bit if inky treatment. I then cut an aperture in the from and added a Tattered Lace pearl edge frame. The sentiment is from Inkylicious, heat embossed with detail copper powder and another Tattered Lace die used to cut the mat.

The pretty flower is made from some satin ribbon I picked up at the Thetford show the other week, you cut a length of seven petals, pull up the thread which is already running through the top of the ribbon and you end up with the flower which can then be coloured with inks, pens or whatever - I used distress ink and water. A bow in the centre and a tag which came with the papers onto which I stamped a Penny Black sentiment and embossed with copper to match the focal quote.