For my project today I had a playtime “what should I do to it next” type day… I am not gonna lie when I tell you this turned into an all day play so this clean and simple card has a lot of hours put into it. That means it will have to be sent to just the right person haha – do you do that?

First I created the background by stamping the flowers and leaves from the Happy Scarecrow set. I decided I didn’t want a fall card so I pulled out a color wheel and put together a fun non-fall color combo. I really love these colors together! I love being able to stretch my stamp sets this way!

I decided to color with pencils (part of the reason it took so long right?!) so in order to save time, before I started coloring, I went ahead and cut my panel down to a little smaller than card size so I could mount it onto a black panel a have a border.

As I was coloring all of the flowers, I thought it would be more dramatic if I colored in the background so I grabbed my pencils and went to work… I wanted it to blend well but I don’t have great luck with Gamsol and my Polychromos so I grabbed out my Vaseline. It is a trick I learned somewhere along the way and I love it. Just dip a Q-tip into the Vaseline and start blending (not a lot is needed and you can get more as you need it). If you need to go back in to create a shadow, you can did the pencil into the Vaseline and use it that way too.

After I colored it , I decided to create an Ecplise card so I die cut the word Friend out (yes, I die cut it after all that coloring!) Keep all the pieces – it will be important! I cut out the word several more times on to black card stock and glued them all together into a stack.

I mounted the background onto the black panel and then fit everything back together. First, put the original die cut into place and glue down all of the inside pieces (inside of the r, e, and d.) Then pull out the word and glue it onto the black stack and then fit it into place over the inside pieces which are now recessed and the word it standing out.

I added a sentiment from the new Happy Everything Sentiment Strips and put it on a white card. It really turned out great – The colors are a lot richer than they look in the picture and I see this color combo again in my future!

I hope you are inspired and thank you for stopping by!!

Lyn