Visible Image - Flora and Fauna

Our theme at Visible Image this week is Flora and Fauna, which is very timely, because the flora and fauna near me think it's summer already with all the sunshine we've been having.  In particular, the magnolias have been stunning, and I wanted to capture their magnificent blooms.  

I started off by stamping the main image from Total Chaos onto masking paper a couple of times, then stamped the first magnolia in the bottom left corner of my piece of card.  I masked that, then stamped the second flower offset and above, then masked that and stamped the third.  I used Vintage Photo Archival ink instead of my normal black waterproof pigment ink.

Masking the flowers off as necessary, I stamped the leaf three times in Peeled Paint Distress ink.

Then using Distress Inks as watercolour paints, I sloshed some colour onto the flowers and leaves.

The archival ink outline meant that it wouldn't run into the colour on the flowers, but on the leaves I used the same Peeled Paint Distress ink to watercolour them and drag the colour in, but left any inner circles white.  Using watercolour pencils, I added a blue border around the images to represent sky.

The birthday sentiment is from Birthday Wishes.  I stamped it in Catherine Pooler Sixteen Candles ink, then a second time with Pixie Dust, only inking the lower half.

I folded a piece of brown A4 card to A5, then stencilled some leaves around the edges using Brilliance Lightning Black ink, which has gold pigment that really shows up well on dark card when the light catches it.

Then I mounted the front panel onto the card.  I didn't even need to splatter any ink over the design because the splatters are built into the stamps.

In my stash I had a sheet of butterflies from Wings of Change that I had already painted in similar shades.

I took the smallest one, added a bit of Picked Raspberry to the edges and cut it out, then mounted it onto the card panel, folding it back slightly.

Here's a look at the finished card with the stamps and stencil, which are all available in the Visible Image store.