Back to Work

Welcome back from the holidays! I hope yours was safe and enjoyable.  I was fortunate to spend some time with various family members. Soon the craft room summoned me. I had quite a bit of work to do for the KLM design team. Then I needed to create a gift basket of cards for a prize at a fund raiser for my younger sister, who has been battling breast cancer bravely!

The January release for KLM Digital Designs included my favorite flower and a nice "Just a Note" sentiment. I combined the two on this one card. If you look closer at the background you can see that the mum is also printed on this.
This was achieved by arranging the mums on the paper as desired and reducing the opacity. You will need to play with the percentage to get the effect you want. I found anything less than 50% didn't work well. Next, I sized and placed the sentiment in a text box, then printed the whole front.  The paper was then lightly sponged with distress ink.
(I trust no ink completely. When adding inks over black I dab the ink, careful not to rub, building layers of ink on the page.)
I printed a number of the mums at a regular opacity as I knew I would be using several. They are colored with Copics, cut out and raised slightly on the background.

I really like to give some of my elements dimension but at times the foam dimensionals are too high. I have used the 3M foam mounting tape on these mums. I use the very thin thickness. It looks close to being one-sixteenth of an inch. I find this to be just enough.
This card used Georgia Pacific white card stock, Recollections Burgundy paper,  My Favorite Things
A2 Stitched Rectangle STAX set 1 and Stitched Mod Rectangles STAX Die-namics.

Using the same mum I used a Jennifer McGuire technique to make this background paper. ( Sorry. I searched for that video for over an hour to link it here, but never found it!) This used
SO many stamps! It's a good thing I have tons of sets with Thank you.  It takes a bit of time but one can make many backgrounds and use them with a variety of accents. In this case I shaded the mum with copics and Wink of Stella, then attached it to the "thank you" panel. I used a small white scrap to cut a fish tail sentiment strip. That little white strip helps to ground the accent mum.

I have one more card for the January release before moving on to the February images. I'll post that later.

Enjoy your weekend,
Susan