Fabulous Flora Archives - My Elegant Cards

I’ve mentioned before that I am a member of an online walking forum. Gail is one of the organisers of the site and a wonderful lady. She’s shared a lot over the last 15 or so years that I’ve “known” her including a lot about her family. It was shocking last year to hear that she needed brain surgery and that she had a tumour. She’d truly give the shirt off her back to anyone if it would help and it hurts immensely to have to report that she died recently. So of course I made a card. I don’t know that it helps at all. When Mum died, reading the cards just made me cry. But I guess it’s good to hear the memories. Eventually. So Gail, Fabulous Flora is for you. It fits, you were so passionate about your garden.

I took the image from Fabulous Flora, stamped it on scrap paper and then snipped it out. Then I stamped it onto my watercolour paper and then masked off that stamping and stamped again. I used my aquapainter to colour in the figs in the archival basic black but that wasn’t quite right so I added some elegant eggplant. I think that the combination of the two colours works. I used garden green for the leaves and I tried not to be too precise since the image is sketched rather than precisely drawn. I then added the sentiment from the Thoughts and Prayers set and glued this to an elegant eggplant cardbase with a skinny basic black mat. I really find that a black frame pulls everything together when I’m watercolouring – and thus using archival basic black to stamp the images.

Rest in Peace Gail. I’m glad that you’re no longer in pain, that you no longer have to lug around heavy equipment to live. But we’re going to miss you.

Liz

It’s Thursday and time for the first challenge in July at CAS Colours & Sketches which means it’s a colour challenge. We’re doing things a little differently for July and August; the 8 members of the design team are each taking a single week and first up is my sister, Caro. I decided to use the hostess set, Fabulous Flora for my card.

And here’s the banner which inspired my card:

Unfortunately I have need of a couple of sympathy cards and this colour combo worked perfectly. I stamped the flower image in archival basic black onto watercolour paper. After giving it a minute or two for drying, I coloured it in with my aquapainter. I had a fairly dry aquapainter so that I could more easily control the amount of water added to the ink pad top (you just squeeze the pad to get some ink on the top and then use that as your palette). The stalk is soft suede, the leaves are cucumber crush and the flower is in elegant eggplant with the centre of the flower being almost undiluted. I then added the sentiment from Teeny Tiny Wishes in elegant eggplant.

I played around with all three colours to decide on the mat and cardbase but in the end, I decided that a skinny basic black mat was the best onto the elegant eggplant. The cucumber crush was too bright and didn’t look at all sympathetic!

I’d definitely suggest that Fabulous Flora is a set to consider the next time you have some Stampin’ Rewards – it’s only $11 for clear mount and $15 for wood so it’s great value. I’d also suggest popping over to CAS Colours & Sketches to see what the rest of the team have for your inspiration.

See you tomorrow,

Liz