April Showers Bring May Flowers

This week’s challenge at Mothers and Daughters Creations is a color challenge – they've challenged their blog readers to create a card with a spring theme with the colors light blue, yellow, and black. Now that IS a challenge for me, since black is not a color that comes to mind when I think of spring. I had to make a concerted effort to use it as an accent color on one of the two cards I made for this challenge. It would have been a lot easier with a bumble bee stamp!

When I think of spring, I think of April showers and May flowers and Stampavie’s Lily and Milo “Rainy Day” stamp is perfect for this theme. I used different shades of light blue to create two very different cards with very different personalities.

Using a light navy blue as my primary color for my image for this first card, I matted the rainy day friends first on a delicate floral pastel Imaginisce paper and then onto yellow and black card stock. I added a layer of light navy gingham checked paper and then another layer of black card stock. I punched the edges of each layer with one of Martha Stewart’s lace edge punches. A thin sheer black ribbon provided a bold but not overpowering place to anchor flowers in black and yellow. I used Prima’s Heavenly Cut flowers which have flowers in both silk and a thin, organza-like material which I topped with a small yellow Prima flower. I used Kaiser blue pearls to embellish the umbrella with a larger pearl on top and smaller pearls on the curlicues, on the little girl's hair bow, and in the center of the flower.

For this second card, I used both sides of the double sided “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” patterned paper from the For Peep's Sake Collection by Imaginisce and overlapped them to create a pastel blue stripe and floral background.

I stamped the image in Versafine Black Onyx ink, my token “black” for the card challenge. Watercolored in pale yellow and aqua, I mounted my rainy day couple on a background of solid light blue card stock embossed with Cuttlebug’s “Bubbles” folder. In the original image, the children are standing in a small puddle and I cut and layered their “puddle” from pieces of vellum.

The corner embellishment was cut with a Cuttlebug victorian corner die. With its central tulip, it’s the perfect compliment to the tulip print paper. Light aqua and yellow Prima flowers, some punched yellow branches, and a yellow button from the Sugared button collection finish the right lower corner.

On the inside of the card, I added a panel of the same floral paper, edged with a lace edge punch and embellished with a corresponding corner treatment.The stamped sentiment, "Feel Better Soon" brings the colors in the floral panel to life.

As much as possible, I try to embellish the inside of the card to coordinate with the cover. It's just one more thing that makes a hand made card stand out from the crowd.