Gum blossoms blue
Posted: September 1, 2009 Filed under: Bloom Away 4 Comments
When I received my new Bloom Away set from the Australian catalog, I stamped each image in black and then looked up the colours of the flowers to try watercolouring them as realistically as possible. This is the first image I did after searching online for my colours and finding this painting. I should have looked even closer to home as there was a beautiful picture that my dad had taken and included in a calendar he made and sent us last year.
After I had finished the colouring I wasn’t sure what I wanted in the background and tried several arrangements of blue blossoms before deciding to fill in the entire background. On one hand it seems a bit busy, on the other I feel like I just made my own patterned paper.
Supplies:
Stamps: Bloom Away
Inks: Basic Black, Not quite Navy
Cardstock: Not quite Navy, Whisper White
Also: Faber-Castell watercolour pencils
Bloom Away
Posted: August 16, 2009 Filed under: Bloom Away, CAS 12 Comments
My parents arrived from Australia a week or so ago, with this stamp set. It is an SU set but I don’t imagine it will ever appear in my Canadian catalog because it features Australian native flowers. I was browsing some blogs one day and saw a card which featured a gum blossom, so followed up the card information to find the set in the Australian catalog. My dad located a demonstrator not far from their place and… now I have a new set.
The set includes a waratah, a gum blossom and a banksia, these are a couple of my first attempts with the gum and banksia. I know the gum blossom will be my favourite stamp from the set. I have like gum blossoms ever since my mum read Snugglepot and Cuddlepie to me when I was five or six. I even won a prize in Grade 1, when I dressed up as Ragged Blossom for a Book Week parade!
I stamped the full image twice for both cards, once in green, once in black. I coloured the black images using watercolour pencils, ink from the stamp pad lids and a blender pen. I then punched out a feature square from the coloured image, matted it and attached it to the green image with stampin’ dimensionals. In the gum blossom card above I masked the edge of the background image using a post-it note and then stamped the left of the stamp again to create a larger bunch of blossom.
Thank you for dropping in today and a special thanks for the encouraging comments people have been leaving for me. I have really enjoyed your kind words.
Supplies:
Stamps: Bloom Away, Fundamental Phrases
Inks: Basic Black, Always Artichoke, Old Olive, Pixie Pink
Cardstock: Always Artichoke, Old Olive, Whisper White
Also: Faber-Castell watercolour pencils, square punches
Heather Telford 
