agapanthus

Hello there! ClarityCrafts TV day today, so I’ve been at the Create & Craft studios just outside Peterborough. I thought I’d share a card that I demo’d across the two shows (we ran out of time to finish it on the first one) that was inspired by a design my team-mate Sonia Goodliff made. I’ve used the new ‘agapanthus’ stamp from Linda’s Florals collection together with one of the pots from the ‘vases 3’ stencil for a potted plant.

I started with the stencil on a piece of Antarctica paper that I’d cut to fit on a 7×7 card blank. I lined up one of the pots on the lower part of the paper, covered the other apertures with sticky notes and sponged ‘shadow grey’ Archival ink into the pot – I tried to stay away from the very top as I didn’t want the full rim. I then ran round the edges of the stencil with a micron pen to give the edges definition.

Next was to tape off the top of the pot so I could add the flowers. On this one I pleated masking tape around the rim of the pot, but when I was prepping my TV demos I had a lighbulb moment so traced the stencil outline onto a sticky note and fussy cut it – much easier! Having stamped the agapanthus, I went back to the leafy plant on the stencil, laid it over the stamped image and traced a few additional leaves, again with the micron pen.

It was then on to colouring. I shaded in the flowers and leaves with blue and purple Pergaliner B pencils, but the colouring on the flowers looked a little rough. I dabbed a little Dorso oil onto a spot-on sponge, picked the oil up with a blending nib and went over the pencil colouring which smoothed it out beautifully.

On then to the finishing touches. I used the micron pen to draw in the back rim of the pot and coloured the soil, stamped the sentiments in black Archival ink and sponged ‘watering can’ Archival ink across a torn piece of copy paper . I layered it on a mount that I’d cut from Waimea Fall companion paper with the ‘lattice’ square nested doodle frame-it panel dies – as it’s a large piece I used a smaller square die to cut out the centre, so I can use that for another card! The whole piece then went onto a 7×7 card bank.