A Burst of Spring

Spring has finally sprung in our garden!  So I took inspiration from the fresh colours on display whilst gardening at the weekend.  I have used stamps, dies and stencils from Chocolate Baroque, Aqua Tints and Distress Inks to create  this card.  Starting with a piece of white card I dabbed the Aqua Tints (2 x green, yellow)  randomly all over the card, spritzed it with water to ensure it is all wet, and sprinkled salt over it.  On another piece of white card I stamped some images from the 'Fluttering Hearts' set in black ink and heat embossed them in black powder.  I then painted all the images with Aqua Tints and DI's (Mustard Seed, Mowed Lawn, Twisted Citron  and Picked Rasberry).  I added some extra interest with a white pen and some glitter, then cut them all out.  The background panel was dry by now so I rubbed the salt off revealing beautiful random patterns that look like bursts of colour, resembling the way the garden is bursting into bloom.  I took a Tando Creative stencil - leaves - and applied two green DI's through it.  I noticed that all the ferns in our garden were unfurling their leaves so I wanted to re-create this with the stencil, placing them along the bottom of the panel.  Further up I used another Tando stencil (Flourish) and applied Fossilized Amber DI through it.  The sun was shining in our garden so I used another stencil ( sunburst) to bring that to the piece, using Iridescent Gold Dyna paint.   I painted some spare white card with each of the Aqua Tints, then die cut several sets of Crealies flower dies and some foliage out of the card.  I applied DI's to the edges of all the die cuts then layered the flowers up and added pearls to the flower centres.  I then took some Kraft card and put it through a basket weave embossing folder.  I added Picked Rasberry DI around the edges, and also around the edges of the background panel.  I matted the bp onto the Kraft card and layered them onto the base card.  I attached all the embellishments in 3D with dimensional glue to create my Spring design.  I am really pleased with this card, it encapsulates all the elements of our Spring garden in a contemporary design.