Flowers in bloom

 Good morning blogland,

New Saturday - new challenge and this week it's time for a new challenge over at Sweet Stampin' with the theme this fortnight being 'Flowers'.  As always there are no prizes on offer but the joy is in the taking part and also being awarded a Top 3 pick.  The rules are very simple - you must stamp (rubber or digital is fine), no backlinking and follow the theme and, other than that, we are a very easy going challenge so what you enter is entirely up to you.

Now me and flower stamps don't really get along that well - every time I try using proper flower stamps something always goes wrong. Generally when the theme of a challenge is 'flowers' I would go down the route of flowers on the paper, flower embellishments or the stamp I use being a person with flowers.  This time I thought, nah I'll try for proper flowers again - disaster!

I'll show you the cards first:

Card one:

Card Two:

Supplies used:

Rubber stamp:

My Favorite Things - Magnolia Blossoms

coloured with my Copics

Sentiments:

Card one - Taylored Expressions (a matching sentiment set and die from Simple Strips)

'Happy Birthday' and 'well-rounded'

Card Two - a very, very, very old pre-printed/pre-cut sentiment from Craftwork Cards

Dies:

Card one: Honey Doo Crafts - Triple Dots and Dies & Polkadoodles Botanical Foilage Dies

Card two: Honey Doo Crafts - Connect the Dots & un-branded stitched dies

Backgrounds:

Card one: Distress Ink and blender brush

Card two: Cosmic Shimmer Airless Mister and spattered Distress Ink

Anything else:

Card one: self-adhesive gems

How much can you take of my tale of woe with the first card I wonder?  Well, I mis-cut the die and had to do it again, and didn't get it quite right (the bad bit is hidden!), my glue dispenser bottle was half very low -- so I filled it and, obviously, made a complete mess of my work mat and the bottle.  The fine nibs for the differing glues I tried (I was trying to get glue on the back of those delicate dies) were bunged and took me ages to wash them out and get them working again.  I used a pre-cut matt for the card and I do not like it - I really miss the stitched edge and, finally, the Distress Inking went wrong.  I was going for a particular look and I completely got it wrong. I do not like that card.

Feeling empowered that I could push through - I made card two.  So much relief - I made it and liked it!  Yay! 😂

I am not touching flower stamps again for a good long time! 😂

I know my Teamies cards are really wonderfully flowery as well, not nearly as traumatic as mine, so please pop on over and take a gander, we'd appreciate it.

Until next time,

Sarah