Monthly Archives: July 2007

I told you I’d share my favorite Flourishes design and this is it! I had so much fun getting a little creative with the set. You’ll have to look close…see the vase? It is the fancy pedestal for the cake plate! The flowers are tiny flowers for embellishing the cake! I was just tickled with this one. 🙂

Now if you are checking in today, Thursday, you are probably wondering about the Ways to Use it Challenge! Because I’m so swamped at the moment… Shelly (papermoon04) is so kindly helping me out! Make sure you check out the super fun WT123 Product Parade on SCS and play along if you can! Thanks so much Shelly! I hope that those of you who are SCS Fan Club members are having a fabulous time on the second day of Dare to Get Dirty! 🙂 Actually…LOL….you are all probably so busy that you don’t have time to blog surf! Have fun creating!

Two things you may want to take note of for tomorrow! First of all…Flourishes is having their Grand Opening! So exciting! Be sure to check it out! The second thing…Friday is my day to post a challenge in the Dare to Get Dirty challenges. Stop by and play along! It is sure to be a lot of fun!
Flourishes Vase

For this design, I had to try a few things to get it to work. I’ll share them here and then you can do it on the first try. 🙂 USE watercolor paper! It makes a huge difference!!! First of all I stamped my vase with Brocade Blue classic ink. I then watercolored in some strokes of greenery with my Aquapainter and Old Olive ink. With one of the tiny flowers, I repeatedly stamped first and second impressions of flowers in Lavendar Lace to get good coverage and then repeated with another flower stamp and Purely Pomegranate. I then added in more greenery strokes with Always Artichoke. Really…this didn’t take long…it just sounds like more work than it is! With a wet aquabrush or a spray bottle with fine mist of water…lightly wet the flowers so they blend like a watercolor. Go back and lightly brush the edges of the vase to pick up the blue color and lightly color in the vase.

Quick Tip: If you find your paper too wet or your colors are bleeding….quickly blot with a tissue.

After allowing the paper to dry well, I then stamped the sentiment over the vase and adhered a little scrap of knotted ribbon with a glue dot. I decided I didn’t want to mat my image to keep the design subtle and play up on texture rather than harsh contrasts. To do this and still define my edges, I used my edge distresser to add texture.

To keep the focus on my “watercoloring”, I decided to keep the background very subtle and simple. I decided to emboss my vanilla cardstock with the Cuttlebug Stylized Flowers folder. This one is my fave! Now these folders do have there limitations. When making a square card, it has to be a pretty small layer or you can’t emboss the whole surface. What to do? Make it part of the design! And so, I embossed just over 3/4 of the surface by inserting as much of the square as possible into the folder and then embossing. I then ran a rose ribbon over the “seam” to incorporate it into the design and to anchor my main image. 🙂 Easy! The panel was then matted with an 1/8″ layer of regal rose and then mounted onto a 5″ square vanilla card base. C’est tout!

Supply List:

Cardstock: Very Vanilla, Regal Rose – Stampin Up

Stamps: Flourished Words, Cake Decorating 101 – Flourishes

Ink: Purely Pomegranate, Lavendar Lace, Old Olive, Brocade Blue, Always Artichoke – SU, Black Palette Noir – Stewart Superiour

Other: Cuttlebug & CB embossing folder – Provocraft, aquapainter & Ribbon- Stampin Up, Edge Distresser – Heidi Swapp, gingham ribbon – Wal-mart

Yay! Flourishes has unveiled their brand new soon to-be-released stamp sets, Cake Decorating 101 & Flourished Words! I’ve been having a great time playing with my new sets that arrived last Friday! You should really check them out as the sets are now viewable at Flourishes. The grand opening for Flourishes is Friday July 27 and there will be a promotion running from July 27th to August 1st to kick it off! 15% off the stamp/paper combo Fourished Infusion Combo kit. So fun!

The new, exclusive Cake Decorating 101 set is so darling! I just love all the options you have! Thirty-Four!!! mix and match pieces to create your own cake design. Cake decorating has never been so much fun, especially since there is no kitchen to clean up afterwards! I took a course in cake decorating about 7 years ago (I know,I know… I have to try everything at least once! LOL) and believe me, the mess I would make was incredible! LOL

The other new, exclusive stamp set is Flourished Words! Love them! Gorgeous script, fabulous size and great variety of sentiments. I just love how easy it is to stamp them and the stamps are clear photopolymer. I know these 27 words that mix and match and fit into a cute little CD case are going to be long-time faves!

Paper-Pieced Cake

For this design, I just had to try paper-piecing the cake. It is hard to see in the pic, but using the Basic Grey pink and sand colored distressed patterned paper works perfectly to give the cake some texture and a fun look. Using a Colorbox cat’s eye craft pad in dark brown, I inked up my cake pieces, stamped the cake and then embossed it all in clear embossing powder. After cutting out the cake, I did the same with the pedestal platter. Cutting it out means, easy, easy, easy. I didn’t even have to mask the cake to add the plate. AFter gluing the cake all together onto Very Vanilla cardstock, I added a tiny Prima flower and brad and then used soft pink liquid pearls to add some more frosting. 🙂

The layout itself is pretty straightforward. This Infuse paper is sooo pretty, you just don’t want to cover too much of it up! All the cardstock and patterned paper edges were sponged with Close to Cocoa ink. A little scrap of ribbon was stapled on the main image to draw attention to the sentiment and add to that shabby look.

I’ve been busy designing lots of new cards and ideas for this stamp set. Make sure you come back Friday for my favorite! It’s a little out of the box and you may not even see right away that I did use the set. I can’t believe how flexible this Cake Decorating 101 set is. You can do more with it than just decorate cakes! 🙂

Supply List:

Cardstock: Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla – SU

Patterned paper: 6×6 Infuse paper pad

Stamps: Cake Decorating 101, Flourished Words – Flourishes

Ink: Close to Cocoa – SU, Brown Craft – Colorbox

Other: ribbon – SU, stapler, Prima, brad – Making Memories, liquid pearls – Ranger