A New Challenge, A New Season!

Welcome Spring! It's finally here in the Northeast and I couldn't be happier.

This week's card challenge at Mothers and Daughters Creations is to make a card with a box, with your design spilling out of the box. Check out what Melissa Earnest did. She created the design inside of a box on her card. I thought that was truly inspired!

For my card, I chose to feature violets. Next to lilacs, pansies and violets are my favorite spring flowers, hands down. So I popped a bunch of violets into a box, and of course, some blossoms fell around the box as well.

I stamped the image several times on white card stock, and watercolored and cut out the images. I also stamped it directly on the striped background paper. Then I layered the leaves and blossoms over it for depth and shading. Ordinaruly I stamp images onto heavier weight watercolor paper and cut them out, but the intricacy of the stems in this design would have made the job of cutting them out rather formidable. Stamping the design in a little bit darker shade of green ink directly onto the card gave me a canvas upon which to build the nosegay without having to worry about the stems.

For my background, I chose a striped paper from Melissa Frances that says spring in a big way and ties all of the colors together. I matted it onto two layers of lavender card stock that were from the same card stock collection - Core'Dinations - as the card base. I matted the patterned stripe onto the darker shade first, then onto the lighter shade, then onto the dark card base.

Usually the tendency is to mat in increasing or decreasing depth of color. Mixing it up so that the lightest hue is sandwiched between the two darker tones makes each color stand out, and highlights the striped paper with a totally different effect than mounting it on the lighter color would have.

Since I used a dark card base, I had to provide a panel on the inside of the card. I stamped and clear embossed a sentiment and matted it with the same design paper and card stock I used on the front, and added a spray of violets across the bottom.