A Bit of Crafty Genius: Flower Power! Dt post for A little bit crafty

This month my head has been all over the place in one of those hectic, I-don't-know-what-im-doing, anxious moments. My crafty mojo did a runner and has only recently come back (thank goodness!)

I am running extremely late as usual getting myself together for all the commitments I have made but here I am, following through! I know a lot of you can relate, especially when you have 3 little munchkins who have unfortunately been off sick from school after a 2 week holiday. Very stressful.

Flowers are one of my favourite things. They are all so different and I love almost every one. One of my favourite scents is rose as well so flowers everywhere for me! So this months challenge for A little Bit Crafty was definitely up my alley!

I know its expected that I load up a card with 3d handmade flowers and I would LOVE to be able to do that. But I am so picky when it comes to flower arrangement that I am still working on my skills there. It needs to look random whilst not actually being random. Not an easy task! So this month I am actually using a digi stamp from our sponsor Bugaboo Digi Stamps.

When I went to print out my image, I discovered that I had actually run out of my white card. So I decided to have a play around and print it directly only my pearlescent square card. Unfortunately for me my printer wasn't playing nice and did not want to take the thickness of that particular card. So I had to do a little rethink and print onto a thinner 5x7 inch card instead. Of course I really had to think this through as 1. there isn't a setting for these measurements on my printer and 2. the card was rectangular. The image was square. So placement is important to make it work. Of course I could have printed it and then just cut it down but what fun is that? So I went into my graphics program (photoshop) and created a layout with the image, a sentiment and a divider. It was simple yet effective. Since birthday cards are always in high demand, I made this one just that.

Once I finally got over all the printing hurdles, I left it to dry for a little while and broke out my distress pens in my selected colours. For the most part I used my waterbrush and some pearlescent water to do the main part of the painting. For the sky I used a wider flat brush so as not to get too many streaks. I wont go into the details of the actual painting as it was quite a simple thing but if for any reason you want me to add them please feel free to leave me a comment saying so. Just remember as this paper was not watercolour paper be a bit lighter with the water and the blending than you normally would have.

Once I had added the colour to my image, I just heat dried with my heat tool to speed things up a bit and then, while it was still warm I laid a heavy object on top (in my case a Bigz die) to flatten it a little as all the water and the heat had warped it a bit. This wont flatten it completely but if the warping bothers you, you can always take an iron to it. (without steam of course!) Please be sensible though when ironing paper!

I had found this lovely decorative frame in poundland of all places and it was perfect to display some of my smaller bits of art. So I stuck my card in the frame just for photographing purposes. Loving it!