Happy Mother's Day!

 I hope all of you that are mothers out there are spending some time today with your families and enjoying the many benefits that motherhood can bring.  I know all of you aren't mothers, and that's all right.  You can still celebrate the memories and good times you've had with your own mother.  Today brings me lots of memories of my own mom and reminds me of what a loving and wonderful God-fearing woman she was.  I still am trying to live up to the legacy she left with us as a guide to how we should live too.  And that's the legacy I'd like to leave with my own grown-up kids someday.  (Hopefully just not too soon!)  Today's card is the one I made for my own daughter.  She's on a black & white kick lately, so I had to use that for a starting place.  Of course, you know me and pastels, so...

This is it.  I have to say, using the Blending Brushes and then die-cutting flowers and leaves with the Pierced Blooms Dies is totally addicting.  I had trouble stopping myself from making a bazillion flowers in multiple colors.  I ended up with two cards finished and enough layered flowers leftover for another 3-4 cards.  Like I said - truly addicting!

To make the flowers, just blend your favorite colors onto Basic White cardstock using a light touch with the Blending Brushes.  Love, love, love those Blending Brushes!  Make sure the colors touch each other and sometimes blend together to make even more soft colors.  I was using many of my smallish scraps of white to play around finding colors I liked and seeing how dark I wanted to make them.  Here's the list of ink colors I used:  Daffodil Delight, Pale Papaya, Polished Pink, Fresh Freesia, and Just Jade.

If you look closely you can see that many of the flowers are more than one color with the edges or even different petals a blended color.  This is really, really fun to do.  Even the leaves have some of the other colors blended on them, especially the pink and yellow.  

The card base is the Basic White with a smaller layer of Basic Black.  Then I added a triangle of white with black polka dots from the True Love Designer Series Paper.  Unfortunately, that has been retired now and makes me sad, but I will still be using this until I can find something to replace it!

The die-cut for the sentiment is also part of the Pierced Blooms Die set.  Isn't the shape pretty?  And I love the stitching accents too.  The sentiment comes from the Welcoming Window set.  It was just what was needed.  I stamped it using Memento Tuxedo Black ink to stay with the crisp black and white look.  This was attached to the card front using a few Dimensionals.

The different flower sizes were layered together using just a bit of MultiPurpose Liquid Glue.  It was fun playing around with all the different sizes,  shapes, and colors to get the look I wanted for each flower - that's why it makes sense to make a bazillion different flowers to choose from!  Don't you agree?   Some flowers are only two layers and the largest one on the card has three.  Just keep playing until you get the look you want.  After all the flowers were made, I arranged them on the card front then attached some with Dimensionals and some with MultiPurpose Liquid Glue.  I added just a few sequins from the Woven Threads collection.  Yes, they are retired, but just the right colors!

I hope you like this idea using the look of soft pastels to offset the bold black and white of the card.  And definitely give those Blending Brushes a try if you haven't already.  They are a definite must-have item in my stamping world!  Have fun making your world bloom in lovely flowers using these ideas.

If you are planning on ordering this month, please choose me as your demonstrator and use this Host Code for the month of May.  I really appreciate your order and love to send out little goodies as a thank you.  Will I be sending you something at the end of this month too?

Blessings to you and enjoy the day!

Sharon