A Flower for all reasons…

Hello and welcome to the first post on my blog!

I would like to share with you a card that uses one of the great new sets in the 2009-10 Stampin’ Up! Catalogue, called A Rose Is a Rose.  There are 14 stamps in the set and it looks a bit intimidating at first.  However, it provides a choice of the full blown rose, rose buds and leaves as well as the matching flowers to the Bella Rose Designer Series Paper  and a lovely sentiment ‘Thank you for touching my life‘. This is one of those classic sets that produces elegant cards for all occasions – birthday; anniversary; just to say hello or thank you and even for those difficult sympathy cards. Roses come in all shades so there is plenty of scope to adapt it to your needs.

This is a two-step stamping set that allows you to create a shaded effect with a softer base colour and a stronger top colour. I have used the same colour (Riding Hood Red) for both layers of the rose and for the leaves (Kiwi Kiss) but stamped off onto some scrap paper first to reduce the ink coverage for the softer colour. Using the Stamp-a-ma-jig positioning tool allows you to line up the two images perfectly. The rose and leaves have been cut out and mounted on foam pads (Dimensionals).

If you like the torn effect on your cards but still want to keep it fairly neat, here is a great tip I learned at the recent Stampin’ Up! Convention. Take both layers of your cardstock and holding them firmly, gently tear towards you to achieve the required shape. This will expose the core layer giving a more textured effect. Separate the two layers and move them the required distance apart and trim the longer layer to the required size. This gives a similiar profile on both pieces.

Thanks for visiting!