Sending Hugs To A Friend Card

Hi there,

Spring is right around the corner and what better way to get in the mood than beautiful flowers! This card was meant to send hugs to a good friend in need. I think the main floral stamp in the Concord & 9th Hello Lovely stamp set is a beautiful display of flowers. It is so versatile too. For this card, I chose to feature a small vignette of the lovely blossoms.

Sending Hugs card using the Concord & 9th Hello Lovely stamp set

The card began with a square piece of watercolor paper where the main part of the flower stamp was used. It was stamped with the Versafine Smokey Gray ink. It is a waterproof ink so it is perfect for watercolor. The gray color gives a softer, more gentle look than black. You can see, I did not use the other fill-in stamps, instead, I wanted to watercolor all the flowers and foliage with some of my favorite color combinations.

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I wanted a soft look so I first brushed on clean, clear water over the main blossom. Then, loaded my brush with color and added it tto the center. By adding the clear water first, then adding the color to the center, it allowed the watercolors to flow outward from the center, creating a gentle gradation of color. I continued with this method with each flower and leaf.

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After all the flowers and foliage were painted and dry, I mixed a lot of water with black watercolor, creating a gray wash. This wash was used to go in-between all the flowers as a background. A darker gray was used to accent the corners and a small bit of the edges.

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When everything was dry, I lightly added dimensional accents to the center of the rosy red flowers using the Black Diamond Stickles.

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Now, ready to assemble, starting with a white card base, I splattered more of the gray wash used earlier onto the base. While that was drying, I cut a piece of Sugar Wafer gray card stock slightly larger than the floral watercolor square and deckled the edge with Deckle scissors. With the same gray card stock, the “sending hugs” was hand lettered with white McCaffery ink (my favorite for lettering) and an oblique pen holder with a steno nib. If hand-lettering is not your thing, then stamp your favorite message with VersaMark ink and heat emboss with white embossing powder.

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The gray deckled square was mounted to the white card base with a layer of foam in-between, the watercolored flowers were added on top, then the sentiment. A patterned envelope was created using the We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board. For flourish, I had an extra cut-out flower from another project so I added it to the envelope, along with my friend’s name.