Garden Grown Birthday Wishes

Hello there :)

I'm back using one of my favourite stamp sets, perfect for those green-fingered folks. This time I have used the selection of potted plants in the Garden Grow Stamp set from Altenew and their matching dies which are a must for cutting out those intricate shapes ;)

I started by stamping and colouring the plants with Promarkers and Copics then cut them all out with the dies so I could play around arranging my little display :)

To make a subtle background I masked around the edge of the card to leave a rectangle in the centre. I then arranged all the small words and phrases in the set onto a long acrylic block in two staggered lines, making sure I could repeat stamp them across and down the card front. I used three shades of grey ink and started with the lightest at the top.

I felt the space needed some soft inking to help define the edges, especially around the lightest grey text at the top, so I sponged light grey ink in from the edges and faded it to nothing in the centre.

The 'Happy Birthday' sentiment is from an old discontinued Hero Arts stamp set in my stash that I felt fitted the card perfectly.

I absolutely love this set... so many uses and possibilities and it was also good to remind myself of a different way to use the smaller text stamps in the set too :)

                    

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x

The Tool Shed

Good Bank Holiday morning to you :)

I couldn't resist the new Garden Grow set from Altenew, having a large garden and allotment, this set was definitely coming to live with me :) There are so many images for scene building so I decided to use the elements you'd find in a gardeners shed..... not that gardening is exclusively a guy thing but this set is great for masculine cards....

Having looked at the bench stamp I decided to mask off the legs on the stamp with washi tape and use the top as a shelf instead for my tool shed.

This is a one layer card which needed quite a bit of masking so I started by stamping out the hanging tools first and then went onto the shelf. I find it much easier to stamp out the whole design first on an A6 piece of rough paper to use as my spacing guide. I needed to make masks for all the items on the shelf which is really easy to do with Post It notes (you can but the 'all over sticky' kind in stationary shops here in the UK now).

I've water-coloured with distress inks although, because it isn't watercolour card I had to be quite sparing with the water!! The sentiment is from another Altenew set called Birthday Greetings, I thought the scripty font suited the sketchy style of the images :)

   

Not sure if much gardening is going to be taking place here today....... that depends on the Great British Bank Holiday weather as usual!! Hope you enjoy your day whatever you're doing :)
Thanks for stopping by :)
Jenny x