One of my favorite color combinations over the years has been blush and soft green with a touch of black. I first noticed it in the Art Deco room we stayed in at a Stillwater, Minnesota Bed and Breakfast back in the 90's. The black was in shiny lacquered furniture. Though the colors come and go from the Stampin' Up! palette this winter we see a lot of the Blushing Bride and Mint Macaron because of the lovely and popular paper collection, Birthday Bouquet. I thought it would be a good idea to bring back that touch of shiny black for a swap that I did with my downline earlier this month. So today I'm sharing both a Birthday Bouquet card and my Botanical Bundle swap card.
I knew that I wanted to use Botanical Builder Framelits (#140625) with this color combination for the swap because it is my current favorite. Lately I think that I browse more online card challenges than I actually participate in (Here is my Current Challenge pinterest board - not quite caught up because we've been on the road) but the Botanical Bundle stamps and framelits are the first things I think of using for just about any challenge.
Anyway, here is my swap card. Followed by a few details.
- I did just a hint of black shadow for the vine by cutting an extra vine from Basic Black cardstock. Knowing that I probably wouldn't cut it at the exact same angle as I had cut the 5 1/2" wide Mint Macaron card base, I cut the black vine from a 6 inch wide base and just trimmed of the extra after attaching the black so just a little shows through the Mint.
- I added a tiny bit of visual texture to Blushing Bride layer under the vine by stamping the flowers in Blushing Bride ink.
- Ok, I confess that I went a little off the deep end with the flower. I slid some scratch paper over the center part of each petal so that I could sponge just the outer part of the petal with Blushing Bride ink. I used a sponge dauber to do this. Though this might sound putsy you can do 2 petals at a time and it goes pretty fast.
- After that I added Clear Wink of Stella(#141897), which you can see better in the close up.
- A touch of black with some little Tangerine Tango and Melon Mambo punched circles lend brightness to help the Blushing Bride flower stand up to the bold, embossed greeting.
Putting together this card is almost as fun as decorating a cake with real roses!
- I die cut the "Happy Birthday" cake with one of the Party Pop-Up Thinlets Dies (#140620). Once again, I'm using Mint Macaron cardstock.
- The cake sits on a pretty "tablecloth" cut from Birthday Bouquet paper. I used a corner rounder on the top edges and sponged the top to give some depth.
- The flowers are cut with the smallest flower from the Bloomin' Heart Thinlets Dies (#140621). The centers are Candy Dots - Subtles( #130933). Do you hoard those things too? They look so much better on a card than in my accessory drawer. I need to take them out to play more often!
- The dotted Mint Macaron layer is also from the Birthday Bouquet. Do you remember seeing this quick card which uses both the dotted pattern plus the vine framelit from today's first card?
I was going to share a few earlier versions of this color combination but it is going to have to wait for another post...
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll join me at my inkpad again soon!
