Hi, my friends! I'm up on the Pinkfresh Studio blog today with a card that's large, bright, and easier to make than it might look. I made this pretty birthday card with the gorgeous new Pretty Blossoms hot foil plate, stencil set, and die. A rubber stamp is also available in this design suite if you're not interested in hot foiling. Let's get into the details!

I started with a sheet of 11 X 8 1/2 inch heavyweight (110 lb.) white cardstock,  cut in half, and hot foiled in silver with the Pretty Blossoms hot foil plate. Then it was time to color!

I used the 5-stencil set with pink, yellow, and green inks to color in my image: Ballet Slipper, Sparkling Rose, Bubble Gum (pinks), Lemon Whip, Sunshine and Sweet Mustard (yellows) and Meadow, Emerald City and Evergreen for the leaves and stems. I tried to keep the color soft around the outside of the flower petals and concentrated darker colors more towards the center. I also deliberately brought some yellow over to a pink flower petal and some pink to a yellow petal just because I like it when colors combine subtly like that. I left a few of the blooms/buds white. 

Before I cut it out with the accompanying die, I decided I wanted to splatter a bit, just in the middle of the blooms. So I grabbed a sheet of copy paper, placed Pretty Blossom's stencil #1 over it, used a pencil to draw circles in the center of the flowers, and then used a craft knife to cut them out. It didn't matter if the rings were perfect or even good; it doesn't show. Then I laid the copy paper with the small circles cut out over my colored image and splattered with black gouache paint for some pretty contrast in the center of the flowers. I had to add black splatter to the white bloom "manually" by just dotting at it with my paintbrush. There were a couple of places where I thought the splatter was too large; I just put a jewel over it. I also used a black Sharpie to color the very center of the flowers.

Then I die-cut the image out twice and glued them together to make it thicker and stronger. I used two layers of foam tape on the back to pop it up off a white, 5 X 7 in. sized card base. The die for Pretty Blossoms cuts out a 4 1/4 X 5 1/2 inch sized image which would fill a typical A2-sized card, but I decided that I would like to see it with a border, so I put it on a larger card base.

I used the Jeff Alpha die set for an "XOXO"; this size card is a great opportunity to personalize a birthday card and put someone's name on it. I got my stamped birthday sentiment from the Ribbons & Balloons stamp and die sets. And I added a blue vellum hot foiled butterfly for another bit of whimsy and color. I added a few Jewels in pink and yellow and was done with my card.

I hope some of these design choices have inspired you to make something new today! Thanks so much for stopping by!