Cacti in the Sunset

Hi there and a warm welcome to my blog  :)  And for a change it really IS a warm one lol!  We are still enjoying a beautiful summer - hot and sunny - which suits this card very well.  This is one of my samples for the Chocolate Baroque shows in June which featured the beautiful Cacti and Succulents stamps.  For this project I have used stamps from the Scrumptious Succulents set; Distress Oxide inks, Versamark ink, gold embossing powder, gold gilding wax, acetate and an embossing folder from my stash.

I took a piece of CB Cartridge paper and stamped the two 'low' succulent images with Versamark ink, and embossed them in gold.  I then masked those images, stamped and embossed two other images and masked them too.  I then blended DOs all over the panel in pinks, yellows and oranges to create a sunset background.  I drew round a circle die to create a large setting sun before colouring.  My inspiration for this came from sunsets I have seen on past holidays.  I blended ink around the edges of the panel.

When the background was finished I removed the masks ready for colouring the images.

I used DOs to paint the images, mixing and blending colours to shade and highlight them.

Next I took some acetate and cut it to size slightly larger than the focal images.  I tend to do everything by eye so I have no measurements to give you I'm afraid.  I then took some strips of black card, cut to size so that they create a border around the acetate.  I embossed the strips using a border folder from my stash, then added gold gilding wax to them to bring out the pattern.  I attached the strips around the edges of the acetate using red liner tape.  

I matted the background panel onto dark brown card and attached it to a white base card.  I blended ink around the edges of the base card before attaching the acetate.  I cut the acetate larger than the focal image area so that I could create a 'dome' over the plants, and the border strips resemble the metal frame of a Terrarium.

On a small piece of card I blended DOs as before then stamped and embossed a sentiment in gold.  I matted the sentiment panel onto the same dark card and attached the panel to the front of the card.  

I really enjoyed making this card, I love creating something a bit different!  This is a great 'worker' card which would suit any recipient for lots of occasions.  It could also be adapted to create a piece of home decor.
Thank you so much for dropping by today, I hope you have enjoyed this post - feel free to leave me a comment - I hope you'll pop in again soon  :)