Rainbow Dahlias by Laura

Hello, and welcome back, crafty friends! It’s Laura on the blog today, bringing you my last rainbow themed card (shhh, I might have one more next month…watch this space!) I had so much fun creating this card, and while it looks complicated, it was quick and simple to create that colourful background using Concord & 9th Dahlia Turnabout stamp. What took the longest time was picking all the colours I wanted to use. The only rule when choosing your colours is to use dye and/or Distress Inks. I would stay away from pigment inks and Distress Oxides because those particular inks are designed to sit on top of the paper (as to dye and Distress which are absorbed into the paper fibers), and in order to see all of the colours through the overlapping petals, dye or Distress inks work best for this technique.

As always, you can find links to all the fabulous products I used in the product list below. Don’t forget to use TLPTLAURA10 at checkout for a 10% discount off your craft goodies! 🙂

Now for the details on how today’s card came together.

Once I finally chose all of my inks, I did a test run on a scrap piece of paper to see how the flowers would lay out on my panel. Then I got to work stamping, starting with the yellow. I did this for two reasons, one is that yellow can easily get lost amongst brighter colours. Kristina Werner is always saying “protect the yellow.” She is typically mixing watercolours together but I think its true when using other inks (even for stamping!) I’m also all about the yellow this weather so I wanted to make sure it had as much presence as the other, more intense colours.

This turnabout stamp is used just like all the other in the series (if you’d like more information on how to get your stamp set-up, read this blog post I previously wrote that explains all of the pertinent information – just ignore the instructions about the inner and outer stamp as that’s irrelevant for the Dahlia stamp.) I honestly eyeballed the final placement of the flowers, and I changed up the starting quadrant so my flowers wouldn’t be too identical.

I started with the lightest color in each colour set, and moved up to the darkest with each rotation. See? Easy-peasy! Tip: When creating a flower that has a center off the panel, use your gridded craft mat (glass, paper pad or self-healing) to mark your rotating point.After I finished stamping all the flowers, I decided to go back and stamp over one of the petal rotations (on each flower) and stamp right overthe original impression in Versamark so I could heat emboss in clear embossing powder. This gave it just that extra bit of shine and interest. To save time, you can leave this step out if you want.

With the background done, I grabbed some vellum and black card to create my sentiment toppers. I heat embossed the sentiments included in the Dahlia stamp in white embossing powder and trimmed their respective panels down with my paper trimmer. To attach the vellum without seeing any adhesive through the thin paper, I wrapped the vellum around the black card (its layered on) and taped to the back.

I popped the small sentiment up on foam tape to help balance out the design.

I glued the panel to a 4.25” x 5.5” card base I made with Neenah Solar White and my Fiskars 12” Paper Trimmer. To finish off the card, I put a few well-placed Nuvo Crystal Drops in coordinating (and gorgeous!) colours in each of the flower centers, and around the sentiments.

You might notice the (green) center of the purple flower is actually a half-dot (as the flower center is half-off the panel.) To create this, I added a piece of scrap card under the panel and placed the drop as if the panel was completely underneath. When the drop was dry, I carefully cut off the excess with my craft knife. In case you were wondering, my backup plan if that didn’t work (because it didn’t always work in my practice drops!) was to just scrape that drop off the panel and glue on a drop I made on my craft mat onto that same spot.

I’ve had such a good time creating rainbows and using all the colours this past month. I hope you have gotten some springtime inspiration too! I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we have a Facebook group, The Little Paper Treehouse, where you can share your rainbow (or any other) creations with a bunch of supportive crafty friends!

Thanks for stopping by today…and see Y’all next time! xo

WANT TO FIND THESE SUPPLIES:

STAMP

Concord & 9th Dahlia Turnabout Stamp

INK

Tim Holtz Distress Ink – Pine Needles, Festive Berries,bPicked Raspberry, Wilted Violet, Seedless Preserves, Tumbled Glass, Peacock Feathers

Tim Holtz Mini Distress Ink – Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seen, Spiced Marmalade, Rusty Hinge, Old Paper, Twisted Citron, Mowed Lawn, Spun Sugar, Worn Lipstick,Mermaid Lagoon and Faded Jeans

Altenew Crisp Inks Buttercream, Soft Lilac, and Lavender Fields

Hero Arts Shadow Ink Butter Bar, Orange Soda, and Tangerine

Versamark Embossing Ink

CARD

Neenah Solar White