Freshly Made Sketches #593

Hello everyone! I hope all of my US friends had a wonderful Independence Day celebration! Now back to your regularly scheduled events :)

We have a new sketch today at Freshly Made Sketches! Our hostess today is spunky and talented Karren in NZ! There are several on the team that made the fun fold Bridge cards - I did not cross that bridge this week, and kept mine my usual top fold.

I knew I wanted to use the Layered Perky Flower Dies and the Garden Spires Embossing Folder I had just gotten from Simon Says Stamp. Those two fought with me a little in trying to get the placement I wanted, and keep the sentiment panel where it was supposed to be in the sketch! So I worked on individual pieces first, not knowing how it would all fit together. It took me twice as long as it should have, but working with new dies is sometimes a "learn as you go" event!

The flowers and stems were watercolored and then shadowed with Distress Oxide Inks. I actually cut six of the dies, to try for more color variation in the petal layers and make sure I had enough if I messed it up. There are three layers to the petals, but the stems/leaves and main petals are all connected in the die. A little black flicked on for fun dots and texture was fun (although always scary to me!).

I embossed the Garden Spires on heavy cardstock (and forgot to spritz!!) and then inked with Peeled Paint DOX. The sentiment is from In the Heart (Pinkfresh Studio) and stamped with a perfectly matched dye ink from Scrapbook.com. I rarely use anything but black for sentiments, so that was fun. Some torn paper, a little patterned paper from my stash, and my favorite gold metallic thread and rhinestones for sparkle finished the card. 

I hope you will join our sketch challenge, and add your creations to our gallery. This week's challenge will end at 3:00 EDT time on Monday, July 10. Be sure to take a peek at the designs my talented teamies have made (bridge cards and non bridge!) on the FMS blog to inspire you!

Other challenges for this card:

We Love Stamping - July (florals)