Graceful Dancing Daisies

Hi Everyone,

We are sharing a one-layer card featuring the beautiful and graceful Dancing Daisies stamp set by Penny Black. These flowers are so lovely on their own that they don’t need anything but color.

These daisies remind me of the elegant botanical illustrations you would find in 40’s vintage publications. I have always loved them for their simplicity and beauty. So, I am using those illustrations along with the works of Heather Telford and Mimi (a la carte) served as my inspiration.

So, to jump in… for both of these cards, I used a hot-pressed watercolor panel and the stamp mounted in a stamp positioner. Then, began by gently adding the lightest ink to the blossom part of the flower. I began with the pink flowers but I will use the exact technique for the blue one.

I started to color the petals first by inking the stamp with Papertrey Ink Sweet Blush and spritzed it with a fine but generous mist of water, being careful not to flood it but to provide enough moisture to get the ink moving. I continued to ink the flower petals with the Sweet Blush until I got the definition and intensity I was looking for. I then added Autumn Rose at the top of each flower (making sure I don’t color the centers of the flowers) for shading and a little more Autumn Rose lower down on a few of the petals. I made sure I spritzed the stamp each time I inked it.

When the petals were done, I inked the center of each flower with Harvest Gold and a touch of Summer Sunrise and Bright Buttercup, spritzed the stamp with water. To add more shading to the base of the centers, I used a Vintage Photo Distress marker to dab in some color directly onto the centers, then using a moist brush, spread the color to a few more areas.

For the stems and leaves, I used the Bundled Sage and the Ocean Tides ink pads for the easily accessible areas like the leaves and the open areas of the stems. For the hard-to-reach slender stems, I used a Bundled Sage distress marker directly on the stamped stem, then, where necessary spread the ink with a tiny moist brush.

To add darker accents to the stems, I used a Pine Needle distress marker as needed and spread the color with my brush.

When done, I lightly splattered a little Autumn Rose and Bundled Sage onto the panel, along with some white specks of diluted white gouache.

I stamped the sentiment, from the Penny Black Smiles sentiment set, with Pine Feather ink.

The flower panel was mounted onto a slightly larger Autumn Rose panel, then the whole thing was added to a Luxe White card base.

As I mentioned,  blue flowers were created the same way. The only difference was that I used Spring Rain and Enchanted Evening for the ink colors, keeping the centers, stems, and leaves the same colors like the pink version. The blue flower panel was mounted onto Enchanted Evening card stock and a Luxe White card base.

I hope my long-winded explanation of how the card came to be didn’t scare you off and I hope you try it because, in reality, it was one of the easiest and quickest cards I have made! ♥

Goodies Used: