Pretty Flowers with white highlighting.

I am having a minor obsession with the Stampin’ Up! Pretty Flowers Embossing Folder and all the beautiful backgrounds that it can create.  This card is a friendship card that could easily be a thank you or a happy birthday wish. 

The card cuts are as follows.

Start with the 4” x 5-1/4” Highland Heather panel and cut a rectangle from the center.  I used the Stampin Up! Stitched Rectangle #6.

Place the 2 pieces of the panel inside the Pretty Flowers Embossing Folder and emboss as if it was a single panel.

Place the 2 pieces of the panel inside the Pretty Flowers Embossing Folder and emboss as if it was a single panel.

I used the Uninked Stampin’ Pad and Whisper White refill to highlight the texture of the embossed panels.  Because the Whisper White ink is a thicker, pigment ink, it sits on top of the paper rather than saturate it like the other Stampin’ Up! dye-based inks do. 

Once the pad is well inked, use it to swipe across the top of the embossed panels gently.  Less really is more in this technique – but you can always add more as you go along.

The card is ready to assemble.  I used Basic White strips cut from the Stampin’ Up! Stylish Shapes Die set to provide the bands at the middle and the banner for the sentiment.  I used this only because all of the dies in this set also have that stitched border.  (I could have used other dies from the Stitched Rectangles set and just create the banner edge without the stitching as well.)  The sentiment that I used is from the Stampin’ Up! Go To Greetings which is a great set that gets a lot of use!

The flower is cut from the larger die coming from the Summer Shadow Dies.  My first iteration of the card used the Highland Heather card stock for the flower along with Basic White and the Soft Seafoam card stocks for the other petals and the leaves.  But I did not think that it was enough of a focal point.  So, I tried it with Gorgeous Grape card stock – but what do you think?

The inside panel of the card uses a sentiment from Stampin’ Up! Shaded Summer stamp set.  And I tried to copy a technique that Mary Deatherage uses all the time:  highlighting the sentiment with a pretty design stamped over it.  I love this technique, but often forget to try it. 

I have entered this card into a couple of challenges.  The first one is Freshly Made Sketches #541. 

Because I discovered that I chose the purple hues for the design in honor of my friend, Ro, I realized that it qualifies for the challenge in Colorful Options June challenge:  Precious Purple.

I love these challenges because they inspire better design habits and push us out of our “usual” designs. 

Thanks so much for looking at this card for today.

The list of the items that I used follows.  Please let me know if you have a question or other comment about this design.  I think that I will be exploring it some more and with some different elements as well.  It really does have good bones, though.