Everything's Coming Up Roses

I am so happy to be back on my blog again this evening. I have had a tough week this week, especially the last 48 hours while one of my little puppy girls has been so sick. In the last hour, she has really rallied and is back with her happy feet and playful manner. She will always be like a puppy no matter how old she is.  I mean, really, who could resist this face?  But she has been pitiful!

I started so many projects this week and I was not happy with any of them until now.  This one is not what I originally had in mind, but I do love it.  In some ways, this started as an experiment with some of my Peerless Watercolors.  It is so hard to get a deep red in any kind of watercolor.  I didn't go as far as getting out my tube watercolors, but I have been intrigued by this color called Carnation Pink which is one of the Pretty In Pink Collection by Nicholson's Peerless Watercolors.  I have all of those colors swatched but this one is decidedly more red than pink. I could have made it Pink by increasing the amount of water, but I love how intense I was able to get this red.  It takes lots of layers of Festive Berries to get anything even remotely close to this.

For this card, I stamped the flower and two clusters of leaves from the Beautiful Day Stamp Set by Altenew onto watercolor paper, twice and heat embossed it using Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder.  I only recently got the coordinating dies for this stamp set because I use this set so often. Somewhere when this stamp set first came out, I heard that it is supposed to be a peony, but it always makes me think of wild roses when I see it and that's always how I use it.  If I want a peony, I have another set I can use. *Ü*

I water colored the flower and the leaves on the extra images and the flower layer on the card base panel.  I wanted to pop up the top layers on Thin 3D Foam Squares (Scrapbook Adhesives makes it in white and black) and I didn't want the unpainted image to be noticed underneath, so I painted it.  I die cut the extra for my top layer.  As I mentioned, the rose is water colored with Carnation Pink and the leaves with Hunter's Green, both Nicholson's Peerless Watercolors.  Once that was done, I die cut the panel with a Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle in the largest size.  

This week over at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge Blog the theme is "Let's Do The Polka", which I immediately interpreted as Polka-Dots.  I am not really a polka-dot kind of girl, so I took liberties with the theme.  I used one of my stencils that has the three dots in the curve and using a Versamark Marker, inked it up then heat embossed it with Ranger Gold Tinsel Embossing Powder. I went over all of the dots a second time and added more embossing powder.  I love the whimsical feel this added to my card.  I used the Hero Arts Love Stamp & Cuts set for the sentiment and die cut the word from Gold Poster Board then adhered it to my panel with Ranger Multi Medium Matte.   

The butterfly is from SU's Papillion Potpourri as is the matching punch. I was going to use a bigger butterfly die cut, but that seemed to overwhelm the rose so I went with this smaller one.  It's heat embossed on Papertrey Ink Stamper's Select Vellum.  I made a top folding A2 card base using Papertrey Ink's Pure Poppy Cardstock.  I plan to surprise my husband by sneaking this into his lunchbox to find.  I wonder how long it will take him?  

I'll be entering this card at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge "Let's Do the Polka", the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge of "April Showers Bring May Flowers" and the CAS Mix Up Challenge with my 3 being Stamping, Stenciling, and Watercolor with Die Cutting and Heat Embossing thrown in for good measure.  

I hope you all have a great rest of the weekend.  Thank you so much for stopping by and leaving me a comment if you'd like!