Wildflower silhouettes

For Christmas one of the fun crafty presents I received was a set of Wildflower Thinlits dies from my sister. As soon as I saw them I knew I wanted to make a card using the flower die cuts as silhouettes against a watercolor sunset background.

Supplies (all Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted):
Paper: Basic Black card stock, watercolor paper (Strathmore)
Accessories: Wildflower Thinlits dies (Sizzix - TIm Holtz Alterations); Brights Color Burst powders (orange, lemon yellow, ultramarine blue) (Ken Oliver), Aqua Painter, gold sequins (The Makery - Hazel  and Ruby), gold twine, Dimensionals, Mono Muti liquid glue, Glue Dots

What do you think? I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

To make the sunset background, I pulled out my Color Burst watercolor powders, which I haven't used very much. I dampened the watercolor paper and then sprinkled on some orange, lemon yellow and ultramarine blue powders. Using an Aqua Painter brush, I spread and blended the colors until the paper looked like the sky at sunset. If the color was too light in any places, I added a bit more powder and continued blending. (A little Color Burst powder goes a long way, so you don't need to overdo it.) I also ran the Aqua Painter along the edge of the watercolor paper so it wasn't stark white against the black card stock.

I die cut three of the wildflower shapes from Basic Black card stock and played around with the placement until I was happy with the layout. I didn't want the die-cut flowers to be flat on the background so I used a combination of adhesives. I cut tiny pieces of Dimensionals and placed them behind the larger, blossom parts of the die cuts. Then I added liquid glue to the stems and leaves and adhered the pieces to the background.

I didn't want to distract from the bold background and images with a lot of embellishment, so I settled on two touches of gold: gold twine wrapped twice around the bottom of the panel and tied off in a knot and three gold sequins. (Looking at the close-up photo, I think I also should have painted the die cuts with my clear Wink of Stella glitter brush pen to add a little more oomph .) I adhered the finished panel in the center of a Basic Black card base to give it a strong frame.

Tomorrow I'm planning to have a card-making day -- the first I've had in a couple of weeks -- so I hope to have some new cards to share with you next week. Thanks for stopping by!