Flowers for Mother's Day

For Mother's Day this year, I made a Groovi card for my mum, with an inky background. I had the idea for the February Clarity Groovi challenge, which had the theme Flower Power (same as the stamps and stencils Clarity Challenge) but didn't come close to getting it made last month. I only just had it done for Mothers Day - it required a first class stamp to get there in time!

I started with the nested squares, and embossed the corners of the largest square, to define my space. I then used smaller squares to make those corners into squares and rectangles, and filled in a  series of different sized and shaped rectangles between them. This created a variety of spaces for me to work in.

Then the fun bit - filling in! I started by deciding which way up I wanted the grid I'd created, and where to put the words. I then added these using the alphabet on the universal framer plate. Then it was time for the flowers! I used a whole range of plates and borders for this - the henna border, the poinsettia plate, Jayne's humming birds plate among them. I used the wishing well plate - the roof patterns went into a couple of smaller spaces.

I also used the piercing grids to emboss some simple patterns.

This is the finished line work.

Time to add colour - I used my Faber Castell polychromos, from the back.

I'm not sure if it would have been better to stick to fewer colours - but I don't have many pencils so would have been limited to only using three or four!

The next step was to cut out - and I decided to go for the picot cutting. I tried using the straight grid to pierce through, but didn't get on with it, so used the two needle tool. I'm not sure I shouldn't have persevered!

The picot cutting is a bit uneven - I'm out of practice! The angle seemed to make a big difference, where I could hold the parchment below the cut line I found it easier than in the indents, where it was harder to hold the parchment flat. More practice and experimentation required, again!

Time to make a background - on much more comfortable ground for me!

I put some distress ink onto my blending mat - chipped sapphire, dusty concord and a bit of picked raspberry. Spritzed with water, then pressed some stencil card into it. The picked raspberry really stood out!

It was lighter than I wanted for the background, I needed the white embossed lines to stand out, so I repeated with just the blue and purple inks. This filled in the gaps and intensified the colour nicely. (The photo bleaches it a little.)

Using chipped sapphire and the bouquet outline stamp, I over stamped selectively round the edge. I don't want too much fussy detail behind the parchment, but do want the interest in the gaps around the outside of the parchment.

To mount, I used tiny pieces of super sticky tape under the coloured areas of the parchment, then attached the background to a 6x6 card base with a tape pen.

I can't claim to be a parcher, I don't have the skills, and it's not a priority right now to learn them. But I do like being able to produce pieces like this, using the crisp white line art, adding colour, and making a co-ordinating background. And dabbling in a bit of cutting!