Dogwood Daze...

I got the Hero Arts Dogwood stamp on Friday so took it to Stamp Group with me on Saturday.  I had scoped out some examples on Flickr to get me started so my first card was direct copy of this card by Linda aka Oz

I stamped the Dogwood down the side of the kraft card in Desert Sand Memento Ink and then highlighted with white pencil.  The sentiment was also stamped in the same ink, but it seems to disappear into the card.

As I have never seen Dogwood before and didn't know what colour it should be, I took some ''artistic license" and did a couple of cards where I coloured it in.... one blues and one reds. 

I was pleased with them both, but annoyed at myself as I moved the sentiment stamp slightly on the blue one.   Both of these were coloured with watercolour pencils - the blue one blended with an aqua pen and the red one with a colourless blender pen (from Tombow)   With the blue ones I left the leaves and centre black to give focus to the petals and the red one I coloured over the leaves in a dark green and added pearls to the centres.

As I spend most of the day at stamp club day, I also managed to get some more cards made.... the first one here is a technique I found on the net somewhere ( can't find the original post now) - first you emboss your card and then cover it with acrylic paint.  Once it is dry you sand the piece and then cover it with brown ink.  I got a new embossing folder yesterday called Jules Jewells so I thought I'd have a go.  The original had used pink paint and brown ink for a vintage look, but I used purple paint and then rubbed over d Dark plum ink.  I did have a bit of a giggle as after lunch our demo of the day was about using Whitewash card and Choc box card to do what I did manually.... emboss and sand to show the different colours.  Here is my card

Isn't that just a lovely folder... my fav butterflies yet again!!

And finally a card I made for our friend's 60th birthday.

I used a Rubbadubbado stamp which I coloured with a variety of Distress inks to make a Rainbow Trout.  Finished with the Inkadinkadoo sentiment embossed in silver.

Thanks for persevering with this long post.. but it was a pretty full on day yesterday.  Hope your week is good.... my final with my team.... off to lunch on Thursday and have booked myself a mini facial for Friday afternoon... so a good week planned.  Take care