Basics: Sentiment Strips with Brianna French

Hello!  Hi everyone!  I am Brianna French and to say l am excited to be creating for Ink Road Stamps is an egregious understatement!  I feel it is only fair to start with a disclaimer:

'I have never done anything like this before.  I have never written a blog post or created products using my creativity for a company.  I am also VERY new to card making (however, not new to crafting in general).  Therefore, bare with me if I make any mistakes, I can only improve from here!'

Okay, now that that is out of the way, lets talk STAMPS!  I chose to make this card a 5"x5" square, I have found that when I choose to do the triple stamping effect, that a square shape works best.  For this card I used the Bella Flora stamp set and cut three pieces of white watercolor card stock, 2"x2", 3"x3" and 4"x4".

Next, I used low tack double stick tape to temporarily adhere the 3 white squares evenly on top of one another.  Then, using a stamping tool (although, using an acrylic block is just as effective) I arranged my flowers exactly how I wanted them and then stamped them all at once.  I found that I had to do the stamping several times with added pressure in different spots so as to get all three layers of the watercolor card stock to take all of the stamp lines.  Now the fun part (at least in my opinion), I used watercolor paint and chose my color scheme and painted all of the flowers.

Finally, I cut three pieces of aqua card stock slightly bigger, 2 1/4"x2 1/4", 3 1/4"x3 1/4" and 4 1/4"x4 1/4".  I used a coordinating pattern paper and cut it to be the exact size of the card base, 5"x5".  

For the sentiment I used Basics: Sentiment Strips stamp set and chose 'Happy Mother's Day'.  I used watermark ink to stamp the sentiment and then gold embossing powder and my heat tool to give it a little bit of luxury.  As always, before I stamped the sentiment I prepped my white card stock with an anti-static tool to ensure that the embossing powder did not end up in places I didn't want it to.  I used shiny metallic gold card stock and the same aqua card stock to mat the sentiment.  For a finishing touch I used a gold metallic pen and drew little dots and dash lines around the sentiment for an added touch of interest.

I hope you enjoy this process as much as I did!  Thanks so much for visiting!