The other day, my friend Lisa emailed me some photos from near her house in Door County, Wisconsin. She knows that I'm a sunflower freak and that I would really appreciate these. AND I DID! I'd like to live in this field of sunflowers. They make me so happy and they're so sunny and gorgeous. I have to say that when we did visit Door County in years past, what struck me most was the amazing color and beauty of the
flowers up there. We were there in August and it's truly a sight to see. I guess the weather there is such that the flowers don't peak until later in the summer and they're incredible. Partner the brilliance of the flowers and the clear blue of the sky and I can't imagine much that's prettier.
Anyway, those sunflower photos prompted me to sit down and make a sunflower card. Recently, Kristi from HANNA STAMPS sent me this great sunflower set called I LOVE MY GARDEN. She knows about my thing for sunflowers too and it was really sweet of her to think of me. So I stamped my big flower with Onyx Black Versafine onto watercolor paper. Then I watercolored it using various dye inks from STORAGE UNITS INK & MORE! (They have 60 awesome colors!) I was really happy with how it turned out but let it sit on the craft table for a few day before I made it into a card.
Tonight I sat down to get the card made. I found a new Amy Butler paper pad at Michael's today so I went with that for the patterned layer. It's bright and pretty and complimented the flower colors. Yup, it was a shopping day today...I also bought this delish wide satin ribbon at Paper Source so I had to use that too. The big "button" is from my jar where buttons from clothes go...every one that comes with a new clothing item or that's fallen off of something...I save 'em in the jar. The big pearl is a brad from K&Co. The small pearl is from Kaiser.
Now, here's what I learned tonight...why haven't I learned it before? Not sure because I should have! I had my card planned out and layered and ready to adhere when I decide that the sentiment should go in that lower right corner of the stamped flower. I inked up a little sentiment from Anna White's WSD set called SWEET EXPRESSIONS and proceeded to stamp right on the sunflower layer. Uhhh....CRUD! The inked edges of the little sentiment left inky marks next to the sentiment! WHY-OH-WHY do I not learn this lesson?! Anyway, that left me with limited options on how to fix it. I went with the little sentiment flag since I didn't want to add too much more to this card. It's not the optimal fix but I just couldn't bring myself to try and watercolor the whole flower again. You live and learn, right?! Just keep thinking..."aaahhh, pretty, pretty sunflower..."
