I originally overlooked the Sweetbriar Rose set in this year’s catalogue, mostly because single stamps can be hard to use in multiple ways, but I’m really enjoying watercolouring and this set screams out for that. I decided to give my red hot greetings thinlits dies are chance to cool down on whilst making this one.

I made this card back in July at the crop and at that point I didn’t have the archival basic black so I used stazon. It definitely doesn’t give as clean an image as the newer ink, plus it’s harder to get off the stamps – especially when you go to the crop without your stampin’ scrub. I won’t do that again! I used blushing bride and my aquapainter to colour the leaves, starting with a very pale wash of colour and then adding more. I haven’t mastered watercolouring (mastery of anything allegedly takes 10,000 hours so I’m a long way off!) but I really enjoy doing it. The leaves are in wild wasabi, again starting with a pale wash and then going back to darken the stems. I believe that the middles of the flowers are so saffron but it’s hard to be sure 3 months later! I then did a faint outline around the image – wild wasabi around the flowers and blushing bride around the leaves to make the image stand out more.

I matted my piece of watercolour paper with a thin amount of wild wasabi and mounted that on a blushing bride card base leaving a large border of blushing bride. The envelope is lined with the old backgrounds DSP which was cut out using the envelope liners framelits. I’m still working through my retired stash of this paper.

See you tomorrow,

Liz