Poppies in a Stone Vase

Today I had my uncle over for lunch to celebrate his 80th birthday.  Even though it was lunch time, I actually made a full dinner, just had it early in the day so that he could avoid driving home in the dark or in rush hour.  My mom came too and we had a wonderful afternoon.  Happy Belated Birthday G.Roy!!  Love you!

On to the card for today.  I was really happy with my crackled vase that I made a few days ago with the cherry blossoms.  I have been using the ornament punch a lot lately for vases for flowers and wanted to find different ways to finish the vase.  Today's vase uses metallic gold paint and alcohol ink pounced onto card stock.  I haven't done this before, so wasn't sure how it would turn out ... I LOVE IT!!  I didn't have the acrylic finishing spray, so used my Crystal Effects to seal the metallic paint - I just love the finish and it looks like a real glass vase!  I'm on a mission now to come up with new finishes for vases ... and also new vases - hopefully using some of my existing punches and die-cuts with a few alterations.

I also used my Poppy stamp from Stampendous.  I've had this for quite some time, and have played around with it, but was never happy with how it turned out ... until today.  I used the marker layering technique (Stampin' Write markers and blender pen) to color the poppies.  I wanted the poppies and vase to be the focal points of this card, so I didn't add anything else except a sentiment - very CAS.  Hope you like.

"Poppies in a Stone Vase"

Stamps:  Poppy Stems (Stampendous); Thoughts of You (Rubber-Art Stamps)
Paper:  River Rock, watercolor paper, glossy white (SU!)
Ink:  StazOn Black, Pumpkin Pie, Metallic Gold; Stampin' Write markers:  Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, Cajun Craze; Re-inkers:  Cajun Craze, Old Olive
Accessories & Tools:  Blender pen, ornament punch, rubbing alcohol, cotton ball, Crystal Effects, sponge, Stamp-a-ma-jig, sticky strips, glue, removeable tape, and dimensionals

I started by making the vase.  Using glossy white cardstock, I sponged on small bits of Metallic Gold ink.  I wet a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol and then added a couple of drops of both Cajun Craze re-inker and Old Olive re-inker to the ball.  I dabbed the wet cotton ball all round the glossy paper, going overtop of the metallic gold ink and then finished by sponging in a circular motion to blend the inks.  Once dry, I punched out the vase and then covered it with Crystal Effects.  I left it to dry overnight.

Using watercolor paper, I stamped the poppy stems with StazOn black ink, twice (once for the front of the card and then used just one poppy for the inside of the card).  I used the Stampin' Write markers and blender pen to color in the poppies and stems (marker layering technique - check out tutorial on SCS here). 

I cut out the poppies and then moved them around until I was happy with how they looked together as a bouquet.  I used a small piece of removeable tape to secure them together at the bottom of the stems.  I find this is easiest to have them bound together so that I can try the poppies and vase on different cardstock colors and different layouts until I decided how I'm going to finish the card.  In the end, I decided to go with a simple, CAS card to highlight the pretty poppies and stone vase.

Once I knew where I wanted to place the poppies and vase on the card front, I moved them aside and added the sentiment using the Stamp-a-ma-jig and black ink.  I then secured the poppies to the card front, just tacking them with a small piece of sticky strip near the bottom of the stems (below where the top of the vase would be).  I added the stone vase on top, popping it up with dimensionals.