Creating Kindness with Breathtaking Bouquet. I am thrilled to have been asked to join the amazing Creating Kindness Design Team as their Guest Designer for the April Blog Hop. This is such a talented group of crafters. I was honoured to be asked to join them last year, but to be invited again has bowled me over.

The Theme for this month’s hop is Coloured Pencils. As a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator, I am a great fan of our Watercolour Pencils, which we have two amazing assortments of. I normally try to limit myself to just one pack for any project I post here, but for this one I have pushed the boat out and used both.

I have really taken to the Breathtaking Bouquet Background Stamp. For me it is so much more than a background stamp it is an amazing feature stamp, one that I have enjoyed colouring with Stampin’ Blends a few times. I also think that it is the perfect way of sending someone a bouquet of flowers that will last forever. There will be no additional delivery staff needed, just our wonderful Postal workers. Something we need to think about these days.

I thought I would try heat embossing the stamp on vellum and using Gold embossing powder. The result is amazing, so pretty. My plan was to then use our watercolour pencils on the reverse to see if I could get a really soft finish. It is a technique I have not really used before, other than once at a Team Training event last year.

I was not totally sold on the result, so I grabbed a Blender Pen to smooth out the lines from the pencils. Now this was much better and exactly what I was hoping for.

I didn’t want there to be anything much else on the card. I wanted the coloured vellum to be the star. So I grabbed a large Memories & More Card and die cut most of the front away with one of the Stitched Rectangle Dies. I used the next size up to die cut the vellum and then cut a narrow frame from Gold Foil using both. Adding adhesive to vellum is always a challenge. I found the solution was to add Tear & Tape to the edges of the vellum, with half of it hanging off. Fold this to the back and you have adhesive on both the back and the front of the vellum. The back can then be adhered to the outside of the card with the gold frame adhered over the top of that.

1. Liz Yuille – Guest Designer – UK – YOU ARE HERE
2. Danielle Bennenk – Netherlands
3. Tanya Boser – USA
4. Lou Kitzelman – Australia
5. Marcy Denning – Canada
6. Cheryll Miller – Australia
7. Jay Soriano – UK
8. Paula Dobson – New Zealand
9. Sara Levin – USA
10. Jenny Hall – USA