- Sep 24, 2017

Poppy Flowers coloured with Polychromos

Hi everyone, today I have a set of cards for you that I created a while back but never got around to posting on my blog. These cards are made with a beautiful stamp from Creafine (a Dutch brand) featuring these gorgeous poppy flowers (the stamp is called “Klaproos” which is Dutch for poppy flower).

For this first card I started by stamping the flowers on Strathmore “Colored Pencil” paper with Versafine “Onyx Black” ink. Then I started colouring the image with my Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils.

I used the following colours: 126 / 219 / 225 for my reds, 166 and 165 for my greens, 177 for my brown (mainly shadows in the flowers) and 199 for my stronger shadows. I used white ( 101) to burnish my lightest parts and I used 111 (Cadmium Orange) to give my background, around the flowers, a bit more depth.

After I finished colouring I used the biggest MFT Stitched Rectangle Stax die to die cut the image and matted this piece with liquid glue onto matching deep red card stock. This I cut out by hand because I didn’t have a matching die in the right size.

Next it was time to start working on my background. I used one of the stitched Crea-Nest-Lies XXL dies to die cut a piece of dark kraft card stock in the size I wanted and also a matching piece in the same deep red card stock I used before but only in the non-stitched version and one size bigger.

Then I used the same poppy flower stamp to create an interesting background on the dark kraft card stock. I stamped the flowers with Distress ink in the colour “Vintage Photo” after stamping my sentiment from the “Handwritten Phrases” stamp set from Lili of the Valley (I used my scissors to cut apart two different sentiments in this stamp set to be able to line the words up underneath each other) with Versafine “Onyx Black” ink. To make the background look less flat I coloured in the highlights of the flowers on the dark kraft card stock with the same Faber Castell Polychromo in White ( 101) as I used before.

It’s amazing what a little white pencil can do for your background and this handmade background ties the whole card together, I love the result!

To finish this card I glued the dark craft card stock to the dark red piece with liquid glue. Then I foam taped both red pieces to the crème coloured card base and the dark craft piece with one millimetre thick foam tape: that creates a little bit of extra dimension which makes the card even more fun to look at. For my finishing touch I used some sequins in matching colours (the brown ones are from Cartwright’s Sequins in the colour “Satin Gold”).

And that finishes my first card for today.

For my second card I used Strathmore “Toned Gray” paper to colour the same poppy flower on: more often poppy flowers are orangy red or reddish orange or red but I found a couple of pictures with more pinkish purple poppy flowers on the internet and they really looked gorgeous.

I used the following Faber Castell Polychromos: 101 / 119 and 135 for the pinkish purple colours, 171 and 112 for my greens and the same 101 and some 251 around the outer edges to create a bit more definition and shadow.

Next I die cut the piece for my front panel in the right size by using first: one of the Spellbinders “A2 Bracket Borders One” and second: one of the Crea-Nest-Lies XXL rectangle dies. From some matching pinkish purple card stock (this colour is hard to describe: it borders on salmon pink but with a cool undertone) I cut a piece of of one site with one of the other Bracket Borders in the Spellbinders set and glued the gray piece on there with liquid glue. Next I free hand cut around that leaving a small border.

Then it was time to put my sentiment on the card: with flowers I always feel that one of the sentiments from the Altenew “Beautiful Day” stamp set looks very nice and this particular one fits many occasions (I stamped with Versafine “Onyx Black” ink and my MISTI tool). I foam taped the entire piece on a dark cool bordeaux/purple card base and added some finishing touches by gluing on “Sparkling clear sequins” in different sizes from Pretty Pink Posh with Ranger Medium Matte.

For my third card I used Strathmore “Toned Tan” paper to colour the same poppy flower on (I couldn’t get enough of this stamp apparently) and I used more traditional poppy flower colours as you can see. I used the following Faber Castell Polychromos: 118 and121 for my reds, 112 and 165 for my greens, 176 and 175 for my browns and to create some dimension on the background I used 103 (Ivory) and 250 (Gold) around the edges of the flowers.

Next I die cut a circle from the image with one of the Crea-Nest-Lies XXL circle dies and a bigger one with a MFT Stitched circle stax die (but later on I cut of a part using the stitches as my guide to make it fit better (size wise) on the dark red piece) of white linen card stock and an even bigger circle with another Crea-Nest-Lies XXL circle die from dark red card stock). I edged the Toned Tan paper with Distress ink in “Vintage Photo”, the white piece with “Weathered Wood” and the dark red piece with “Aged Mahogany”. Then I glued them all together with liquid glue.

Next it’s time to start working on the background for this card: I die cut a square piece of grey linen card stock in the size I wanted and also a dark red square with a bigger stitched die. I started stamping on the grey piece with the same poppy flower stamp that I used before for the coloured image and I stamped with Delicata “Black Shimmer” ink (this is the only Delicata ink that I have found works well for me and the shimmer on this one is just gorgeous!) I also edged this piece with the same shimmer ink.

After drying this piece with my head tool (pigment ink, the Delicata one for this card, always needs a little bit longer to dry and I didn’t wanted to smudge my pretty flowers) I stamped the same Altenew sentiment from my last card with Versamark ink and heat embossed with Stampendous “Detail White” embossing powder. I then glued the dark grey and the red squares together with liquid glue and foam mounted these squires on my white linen card base with one millimetre thick foam tape. Then I foam taped the circles on in the same way. To finish of this final card for today I edged the white line card base with Distress ink in the colour “Weathered Wood” and used some sequins for my embellishments.

Wow, this post involved a lot of colouring and it took me a while to make these cards but I had so much fun and the cards turned out great so it was totally worth it.