Blue and Black Sarah Kay Spring Blossoms Easel

This card was inspired by a card that Alex made during a friendly cardmaking get-together at Julie's last year. I've been wanting to have a go at this technique ever since and finally got around to doing it the other day. Hopefully you'll like the results.

You can see Alex's original card here.

I shall be entering these cards into the Cute Card Thursday blog challenge, #107, which has Mono Mania as it theme this week.

I started by stamping the Sarah Kay Spring Blossoms image from Stampavie onto 300gsm watercolour paper using Tim Holtz Faded Jeans Distress ink and the colour was then dragged out using a damp paintbrush. Extra colour was added to areas to add shadow.

The image was cut out using the Mega Rectangles Nestabilities die and the edges were coloured using the Faded Jeans ink and cut and dry foam, leaving the die in place to create a white border.

A larger mat was cut from dusky blue card and the edges colour tinted with ColorBox Charcoal Fluid Chalk ink and stamped with a flourish stamp from the Autumn Leaves Flourish V1 Rhona Farrer stamp set using the Versafine Smokey Grey archival pigment ink.

A panel of blue hessian effect paper from the Hot Off The Press Floral Ultimate Cardmaker's Creative Pack was matted onto a panel of the dusky blue card stamped with the Flourish stamp. A panel of the blue hessian effect flourish paper, from the same paper pad, was matted onto stamped blue card and a length of black sparkle weave ribbon was wrapped around this and matted onto the larger panel.

This was then attached to the easel card and the Sarah Kay image panel was attached onto this.

A circle tag was created from the blue card using the Cuttlebug circle tag and stamped with the Flourish stamp. A white circle to mat on top was cut from the watercolour paper using the Sizzix Sizzlets Circles #4 Frames die. The sentiment was stamped in the centre of the circle using the 'Make A Wish' stamp from the Dovecraft Studio G 'Make A Wish' mini stamp set using the Smokey Grey ink. This was then colour tinted using the Faded Jeans ink and a length of the black ribbon was threaded through the hole and the tag attached to the corner of the image panel.

A touch of sparkle was added to the ribbon and flowers in the image by adding Craft Planet Iridescent Sparkle glitter glue.

To create the stop part of the easel, the blue hessian effect flourish paper was matted onto a panel of the blue stamped card and a length of the black ribbon wrapped around. A sentiment panel was created using the Mega Curved Rectangles Nestabilities die, coloured using the Faded Jeans ink with the die still in place. the sentiment was stamped using the Happy Birthday stamp from the 'Make A Wish' mini stamp set and the Smokey Grey ink.

This was actually the second version of this card that I made. The original version, above, was created without the full front panel, but I decided it needed the panel to make the image stand out more.

Here is the card from the side, showing the construction of the card.

(Apologies for the quality of some of these pictures - they were taken on my camera phone - I really must find my proper camera and USB cable for it).