I don’t know about you guys but I hope spring will be here soon, because I’m sooooo ready for it!

To encourage the sun a bit I made a spring appropriate card. To start this card I stamped a stamp from the “Snoesjes” line (number HM9456) from Marianne Design with Versafine “Onyx Black” on Strathmore “Toned Tan” paper.

Then I coloured the image with my Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils. I used:

171, 112, 102, 108, 185, 219, 115, 132, 101, 103, 187, 283 and 176. I first filled the entire image with the white coloured pencil and then added the other colours. After finishing the colouring I went over the black lines with a black Copic multiliner and I used a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen to ad some highlights here and there. After die-cutting the image with the biggest die in the My Favorite Things “Stitched Circle Stax” set I put some Ranger Glossy Accents on the sunglasses she is wearing in her hair.

Then I edged the circle with a Prima Marketing Metallic Chalk Edger in “Bronze”. Since I don’t have that much experience with colouring on tan coloured paper I then had to figure out a way to make a card out of the coloured image. I decided to use a die from my stash that fitted the theme I was going for. It’s a Marianne Design Creatables die with the number LR0141 (as you can see no fancy names with this brand!). I used white card stock for this part.

Now, I have a love-hate relationship with this die: I love the way it looks when everything goes well, I just have trouble making it work well. It’s not the cutting, it’s the embossing afterwards: somehow every time I do the embossing part with my Big Shot the rubber matte moves the paper piece and then the embossing looks really wrong! I constantly end up with paper piecing three pieces together to make a decent full circle!

Do you know how that sometimes goes when you’re crafting and everything goes wrong but you don’t want to give up? That’s how this card was made: the colouring went well but everything after that was a disaster: I couldn’t make this die work well, then I had to tighten the hex screw in the handle of my Big Shot and it turned out that the key you get with the machine somehow destroyed the hole and now I have a circle and not a hex which makes it’s impossible to tighten the hex screw in the future (but help is on it’s way when we’re speaking because Stampin’Up (where I bought my Big Shot from) is sending me a new handle (the hex screw alone would have been sufficient but I’m happy when everything is working again)). I glued paper parts together that didn’t belong together and so on .... But finally I managed to finish this fun sunny card and all was good again!

Back to the card at hand: because I ended up paper piecing three pieces together to make a full circle I felt I needed to cover up the ugly parts somehow, that’s is when the idea with button-embellishments came up. Since I used white card stock for this piece I coloured the die cut with Memento’s “Rhubarb Stalk” and Versafine’s “Crimson Red” to give the die cut some colour but not make it opaque like I would have when I would have used red card stock.

Before gluing the tan coloured circle to the die cut piece I matted the tan coloured circle with some yellow card stock and edged with Memento’s “Dandelion”.

For my second background piece I used another Marianne Design product: it’s a so called Design Folder Extra (it’s a set that comes with an embossing folder and a matching die). I have several of these sets and they are awesome, but this one is my favorite (I used this on some of my Christmas cards as well with a glitter overlay die cut piece). Today I just used the embossing folder from this set, with number DF3415, on some yellow card stock. After embossing I used some Dandelion ink and some Bronze ink over the raised parts and the edges to give the background a bit more definition.

I still felt that there was something missing so I die cut a piece of orange card stock (that I edged with Memento’s “Morocco” ink) and used that as a mat for the yellow part and then I put this card together. For my card base I used a dark red linen textured card that I edged with the Crimson Red ink. The yellow and the orange part were glued together with liquid glue and the orange piece was mounted on the card base with one millimetre thick foam tape.

The coloured image with it’s two mats were glued together using liquid glue and then foam taped to the back piece.

For my finishing touches I glued the button’s on the card with Ranger Medium Mat and I used a sentiment from the Wild Rose Studio “Birthday Circles” stamp set that I layered the same way as the other elements and put it on the card with foam tape.

I would like to submit this card to the following challenges:

- SSS Wednesday Challenge: “Bit O'Green”

http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/wednesdaychallenge/simon-says-bit-o-green-2/

- Southern Girls Challenge: "Pop it up with foam"

http://southerngirlschallenge.blogspot.nl/2017/03/challenge-155-popping-good-times-with.html

- Colour Crazy Challenge: "Anything Goes"

https://colourcrazychallenge.blogspot.nl/2017/03/week-11-colour-crazy-challenge-my-mums.html

- Power Poppy Challenge: "Let's go Green"

http://powerpoppy.blogspot.nl/2017/03/lets-get-coloring-folks.html

- Art Impressions Challenge: "Spring-Y Cards"

http://artimpressionsstamps.blogspot.nl/2017/03/challenge-204-spring-y-cards-plus-6-new.html

- Stamplorations / Theme and Sketch: "Stamps and Spring"

http://stamplorations.blogspot.nl/2017/03/march-challenge.html

- The Ribbon Girls: "Anything Goes"

http://ribbongirls.blogspot.nl/2017/03/march-card-challenge.html

I also used this card design to make two other cards with a different colour theme.

For the grey and pink combination shown above I used Strathmore “Toned Gray” paper to colour on. From my Faber Castell Polychromos I used:

101, 103, 123, 132, 146, 185, 171, 112, 135, 111, 126, 187, 283 and 177.

I used Memento’s “London Fog” to edge the grey circle. For the orange mats I used Memento’s “Tangelo” to edge. For my pink inks I choose Memento’s “Lilac Posies” and ColorBox “Spiced Plum” and for my green ink I choose Memento’s “Cottage Ivy”. Because I didn’t use a linen textured card base I first stamped the card base with yet another Marianne Design Product, this time a background stamp with the number CS0940, I love this text background so much, it fits so many card designs! I didn’t have pink buttons in my stash so I used green ones.

And for the third card for today I used Strathmore “Colored Pencil” paper to colour on using the following Polychromos: 187, 175, 283, 101, 102, 104, 185, 147, 139, 138, 119, 135, 112, 166 and 132. To edge the first circle I used the same Dandelion ink as mentioned before. For my green pieces I used Cottage Ivy. For the background yellow piece I needed a stronger yellow colour so I used Distress Ink in “Scattered Straw” and for my purple I used Memento’s “Grape Jelly”.

And that finishes today’s post! Hope you enjoyed and wishing you a creative and sunny day!

#SnoesjeMarianneDesign #WildrosestudioBirthdayCircles #handmadecards #MarianneDesignCreatablesLR0141 #MarianneDesignDesignFolderExtraDF3415 #MarianneDesignBackgroundstampCS0940