Expressions: May SOM Blog Hop: Flowers for You

Welcome to the May Stamp of the Month: Flowers for You. You should have come from Gina's blog, but don't worry if you started here. The hop is a circle. Just keep going until you get back to where you started. If you get lost along the way, head to Melinda's blog for a full list of participants. Here's a look at this beautiful stamp set...

Here's my first card...

I white embossed the large circular image twice on paper from the new Mix-In Collection that just released today. Using the new Circle Thin Cuts that also released today, I placed the largest circle over the full image, then added the two smallest circles over the second image and die cut them all. I cut some white cardstock with the largest Stitched Rectangle Thin Cuts and then dry embossed with the Cascading Dots Embossing Folder. I matted it over Blue Belle and Black cardstock before gluing it to the card base. I then sponged Black ink along the edges before adding them to the card. After white embossing the sentiment on black cardstock, I added it using foam tape. Some Black Liquid Pearls finished off the card.

After finishing this one, I thought it would be fun to try the same basic idea only with three different colors of background.

I followed the same process, starting with embossing the image twice on pieces of Glacier, Wisteria, and Blue Belle cardstock. I then cut them with the circle thin cuts, but instead of using the largest (3") circle, I went down to the 2.5" circle for the largest. The smaller two are still the 1" and 1.5" circles. I sponged the edges with the coordinating ink colors and backed them with the light side of the coordinating cardstock sponged with the coordinating inks. I then stamped the sentiment in the dominant color.

As I was considering which color to use as the background matte, I fell back on a color design principle I learned years ago: gallon, quart, pint. So... whatever color the largest circle was, I made that both the matte and the sentiment color for my gallon of one color accented with a quart and pint of the other two colors. Here's the predominantly Blue Belle card up close...