Poppy

This is a card I made a couple of weeks back, for one of my sisters. but as her birthday wasn't until last week, and I had to allow extra time for the vagaries of Spanish mail, I didn't want to put it on my blog until now.

This was my first attempt at Sheena Douglas' paint fusion. I have been 'sitting on' the stamps for a while but I have only just been able to source out here the paint she recommends, and when I tried with my usual acrylics, they were just too thin, and I wasn't happy with the results. I am still waiting for a new order of the paints to arrive, so I only have a very limited colour range, but I had enough to attempt the poppy. I had painted it on plain white card which looked rather stark to use as a topper, so in the end I cut the flower and its leaves out, and made a meadow background to mount it on.

For the background I sponged all over the card with distress inks in mustard seed, shabby shutters and peeled paint. I then randomly stamped over it with an Adirondak meadow ink pad and the peeled paint, using Hero arts grasses stamp and several meadow flower stamps by Elusive Images (now Chocolate Baroque). I edged the card with the darker green ink, mounted the poppy and added a green stamped greeting and a butterfly peel-off. I think that was a mistake but I couldn't remove it. Another time I would stamp a small butterfly and colour it. But I was pleased with the card over all and I hope my sister was too.

I am linking this card to
Make it Monday week 44; All paper crafts.
Scrappy Frogs Challenge; Summer flowers.
Stamping Sisters in Christ Challenge 96: Clean and Simple (Well it has no fancy embellishments).
The Paper Shelter Challenge 20: Anything goes.
Craft Room Challenge; Summer birthdays.