Fussy Cut Flowers

 Today I played along with The Color Throwdown #684. This challenge had an interesting color combination of yellow, tan, grey, and black. I wasn't sure what I could create with these colors that spoke to my creativity, but I decided to push myself a little & just see what I could come up with. 

"When skies are grey" kept popping up into my brain as I looked at the color scheme and I knew I had an older stamp from Cocoa Daisy that said "You make me happy when skies are grey", so that phrase became my jumping-off point for this card.

The background was created using Distress Ink blending in Hickory Smoke and Speckled Egg using an extremely old cloud stencil from my stash. I stamped the sentiment in black and then splattered the entire background with Perfect Pearls & matted it on black cardstock & mounted that piece onto a Neenah Desert Storm A2 card base. 

The flowers are from a small Tim Holtz stamp set I picked up at Michaels years ago. This is a similar Tim Holtz stamp set with the same images I used.  I stamped the images in black and embossed them with clear embossing powder. The flowers were watercolored with Distress Inks in Fossilized Amber and the flower centers were watercolored with Ground Espresso and Tea Dye Distress Inks. The stems were watercolored with Walnut Stain and a little Peeled Paint distress inks. 

I then carefully fussy cut all the images, adhered the stems to the background and popped up the flower heads with foam tape. Even though fussy cutting is tedious, most of the time I prefer it to die-cutting because it does not leave a white edge around the image. My biggest tip for successfully fussy cutting images is first to be patient and go slow & most importantly to hold the scissors still and move the image. 

I finished the card with clear sequins from my stash.

I  hope you enjoy my card and that you will give fussy cutting a chance. I am always pleased with how it looks on a completed project.