I had the idea for this Tasteful Touches Flowers Card but didn’t know if it would really turn out. If I even have an idea before I start making a card, it often changes as it goes. Usually I just think I’m going to use a certain stamp set or certain designer paper and go from there.

In looking at this Tasteful Touches Stamp Set I thought about stamping three (or maybe more) flowers randomly on the card front and use that flowery design stamp off to the side of the flowers. I thought it would maybe make it look a little antique.

Three flowers stamped with Memento Ink seemed to fit just fine and then I stamped the flowery grid stamp a few more times around the flowers and off the page in a few areas. I colored the first flower with Calypso Coral Stampin’ Blend markers, but then I decided to color each flower differently. The second flower is colored with Mango Melody and the third with Highland Heather. I just love coloring with my Stampin’ Blends markers! They are alcohol markers so the light and dark shades or even other colors together blend. Just color lightly with them to preserve the brush tips. Really all you need is gentle coloring and not necessarily perfect. Sometimes leaving tiny bits of white space makes it look more realistic.

I also made a “mask” by stamping a flower on a sticky note, making sure part of the flower was stamped over the adhesive on the other side to hold the mask in place when I used it. I stamped the flower and then cut it out with Paper Snips. You can even cut the tiniest bit inside the lines when you are doing masking. Then just stick the mask flower over the stamped flower and then stamp something else over it, like the leaves I did from the same Tasteful Touches Stamp Set. This protects the stamped flower but allows the leaf stamping to show outside the flower image. If you had a tiny leaf stamp that fit outside the flower, then you wouldn’t have to cover the flower. But this is a large sprig of leaves so if you just stamped it, you would be stamping over the flower and that wouldn’t look good!

After coloring the flowers and the tiny leaves with my Stampin’ Blends, I wasn’t sure about leaving the background white. It would have been fine, but my love of coloring with the Blends kept me coloring!! I used Light Pool Party to just kind of scribble in the white space, without trying to be heavy-handed or perfect. Pool Party is a good color for this because it is light enough that the omitted white spaces don’t show up strongly. You might think it would be a big job to color all that space, but since I was just kind of scribbling and not worrying about perfection it went very quickly. I even colored in between some of the tiny flowers in that grid to make it all fit in together.

I’m probably the least satisfied with the greeting. The card was really pretty enough to leave it plain without a greeting and sometimes, like on this card, it’s a little difficult to find the space for a greeting! This greeting is from the Lovely You Stamp Set, with lots of greetings and a pretty font. I punched the one end with the new Lovely Labels Pick a Punch and even made a layer with a slightly wider strip of cardstock. You can use three widths of paper in this punch – 1″, 3/4″, and 1/2″. At the last minute,

I added a small Gold Glimmer Enamel Dot to the greeting for just a little something to finish it off without taking away from the rest of the card.

So there is a card that takes a little bit of time for coloring, but is also one of the best ways to relax and de-stress, I find! There are lots of creative possibilities with these two stamp sets! I hope you will be inspired to create a card or project using this Tasteful Touches Flowers Card.

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