Wild Rose Stem Stamps & Dies by Vicki Finger

Welcome to the blog! Vicki here with you today! I am featuring the newly released Wild Rose Stem Stamps and Dies. I love wild roses although, in reality, they are a pale pink or rose color. The great thing about what we do is we can make them any color we want. The beauty of Art - every kind of art.

This color wasn't my intent when I started but it kind of snowballed into this. My primary objective was just some pale pink. I recently signed up for a watercolor class. I haven't started my homework or classwork yet, but I've been "collecting" tubes of Daniel Smith Watercolors a couple at a time over the last year or so, and I have about 26 colors right now. They have over 300 colors, so I am just getting some basics and some neutrals and will mix colors. I have two or three of each color family plus a neutral, a neutral buff, and a couple of greys. I'm also learning how to mix colors as part of a Facebook Group I'm in. So this kind of started as one project and turned into class practice only a couple of layers of color into it. I switched from Watercolor Pencils to Daniel Smith Watercolors after that.

I used a little Sap Green on the leaves but my focus today was on the petals and getting a much better look than I have previously. I'm very happy with this first attempt although I can see many things I will do differently next time. This is a great image for practice as the petals are large and you can create your custom color and add depth to bring the image to life with depth. Each time is a little bit of a learning experience and things to do differently next time, like adding deeper shadow layers on my next try. There's also a lot to be said for walking away to let that layer fully dry because it does look so different after it dries. I used Quinacridone Purple and Quinacridone Pink for the petals. Today's focus for me was learning to scrub out a little color and add depth a little bit at a time with a complimentary or neutral color. I could have increased the depth!

I love the look of watercolor and I really want to get better at it doing it so, I've been "collecting" information, thoughts, and experiences of friends who are successful in this endeavor. This is my first try at this particular method and I am so excited to do more. For the little stamen on the wild roses, I used Plum Shimmer Fairy Sugar (a new product) to make the deep purple dots.

After I watercolored the blooms, I die cut it with the coordinating die and grabbed the new Springtime Bouquet Patterned Paper Pad to decide which paper I wanted to use to put my card together. I'm a sucker for stripes, especially this more narrow version, and the lovely pastel colors make me think of Spring which is hopefully right around the corner here in North Texas. I used a piece of Winter Wisteria Cardstock to die cut one of the Matinee Rectangles to use as a label. I also really love the font and style of this Poppy Stamps Sentiment Stamps Set called "Springtime Fun". Poppy Stamps is also a Memory Box Company. I love elegant and this font suits me to a "T"!

As usual, I heat embossed my image and my sentiment with Versamark and Antique Gold Embossing Powder from Simon Says Stamp. Using a blending brush, I went all around the outside edges with the matching ink to darken the edges. I just love how this card turned out and how much my watercolor improved.

I still enjoy learning and trying new techniques to share with you all as much as possible. If you are interested in the class, there's a link over at my blog.