Filling in the florals

I’ve been playing with Concord & 9th’s co-ordinating stamp sets ‘filled in florals’ and ‘fine line florals’. For this first card I stamped the large ‘fine line floral’ stamp twice in versamark then embossed in gold powder. To fill in the flowers I switched to the ‘filled in florals’ stamps. I inked the large flower in wild honey ink then added abandoned coral ink around the centre. I spritzed the stamp then pressed it over the matching embossed flower. Because I had spritzed before stamping I got a nice blend of colours which loosely filled the outline. I repeated this step with the blue flowers (blueprint sketch) and burgandy flowers (aged mahogany) I diluted some aged mahogany to paint inside the remaining flowers.

I stamped black soot ink in the centres and bundled sage for the little leafy bit below the petals. I stuck with the gold highlights when adding the sentiment, embossed ‘miss you’ in gold then popped the shimmer gold ‘simple serif’ die-cut letters with white foam. I thought it need just a little something more so added three gold half pearls. Usually I would add splatter but I guess I was feeling fancier!

The inspiration for the second card came as I was stamping off the ‘filled in floral’ stamps after I’d stamped the embossed areas. I grabbed another piece of watercolour paper then inked the flower stamps with the same colours used on the first card, spritzed the stamp then stamped one flower, spritzed again, a second flower, spritzed again and got a third paler flower. Once the panel was fairly full I switched to the leaf stamp, bundled sage and peeled paint ink and added some leaves. I used acrylic blocks for the stamping; there was no need for a stamp positioner with such a loose watery technique.

The watery technique did mean I lost much of the definition of the stamp so I drew some veins on the petals with a spiced marmalade marker once the ink dried. I used the simple serif stamps this time (they match the dies used on the other card) to stamp ‘thanks’ along with one of the sentiments from the C&9 ‘big thanks’ stamp set. This time I did want some black splatter but not all over the place so I chose the safe option of stamping black dots using two stamps from the fine line florals set then drew extra dots with a black marker. A black mat finished it off.

Are you a ‘stay inside the lines’ kind of painter or are you happy to be a bit loose and messy like I was with these cards?

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