Pinky Finger Up!

Hello again my crafty friends, it's Amanda from Pear Blossom Press! Now that another of Kathy Racoosin's 30 day coloring challenges is over, I've got a stockpile of colored images all ready to be made into cards. Have you colored along for any of the challenges? The idea is simple, just color a little every day. No pressure; just practice. I love the challenges because I approach cardmaking a little differently during the run. Instead of starting with an idea for a card, picking out all of the papers and elements, and then coloring my images to coordinate, I just stamp out lots of images and color them in. Usually, I fussy cut the images with my ScanNCut so I have images ready to go. (If I don't use them right away, I will tuck the cut out pieces into the pockets with the stamp sets.) Once I have the images ready to use, I lay them out on my grid mat and play with different configurations. So instead of starting with an overall design, then decorating it, I start with the decorations and work backwards.

Often when I'm coloring, I will color images from different sets in the same colors schemes, since I already have those supplies out. This inadvertently allows stamps from different sets to work together. Hooray for happy accidents! For today's card, I pulled several watercolored images from different sets from The Rabbit Hole Designs and combined them because they were all yellow. I laid out the flowers and leaves from Pretty in Peony on my grid mat and decided I liked the Caffeinated Bee up in the top corner. To keep the images in the exact same configuration, I picked them all up with a piece of Press'n Seal, then glued the flower pieces together from the back.

I wanted to create a background for my card that would tie the elements together and also add a little pizzazz to the scene. I needed to use a color in the yellow family since the flowers and bee took up so much of the space on the card. If I introduced another color under them, it would get too busy. I opted to apply Gold Deco Foil Metallix Gel over a hexagon stencil. It gave the illusion of golden honeycombs. I only applied it where it would be mostly covered by the flowers. After the gel was dry, I stamped my sentiment from Perfectly Blended and popped the Caffeinated Bee and peonies up with foam tape. To add some of the gold shimmer to the flowers and bee, I used a gold gel pen to draw on highlights and quickly blended them out with my finger. I also added some Aqua Shimmer to the bee's wings and coffee mug. I applied a thick coat of Diamond Glaze to the bee's eyeball and mug to finish the card.

I love how this card turned out and I honestly don't think I would have ever considered using the bee and peonies together if I hadn't colored them at the same time for the coloring challenge. So what do you think? Too big of a stretch, or do you like them together? Let me know down in the comments below.

Thanks for buzzing by today. If you'd like to see more cards featuring these stamps, check out Sassy Peonies and March Release. You can also find links to the other products I used for this card in the sister article to this post on my blog. I'll be back again soon with another fun card for you... And now I'm wondering what other caffeinated critters the peonies might go with!