Colour Pencil Flowers on Teal Background

Creating a card with a dark background is not something I often do. I could use a paper with a print that’s related to the theme but not necessarily solid dark colours. Well, this card was inspired on a garment, specifically a dress I saw on social media and it called for a dark teal background. 

I started by stamping the images on a piece of Bristol smooth surface cardstock. To colour this card, I decided to put in practice a technique I had been wanting to try in a larger scale. For this you need very sharp colour pencils which you will have to re-sharpen constantly during the colouring process. I used a mix of stamps, You’re so Sweet from Studio Katia plus one extra flower from the Peony Bouquet Altenew set. As you can see, each flower was coloured differently, I used 2 or 3 tones of the same colour, for instance, one light and one darker pink and so on. I started by adding a layer of white in the center of each petal and leaf, then I worked in strokes starting with the light colour from the edge (extreme) of the petal to the center, being careful not to cover the entire petal. Then, using the same technique, I added another layer of strokes with the darker shade. I try to bring the colours a little bit over to the centre and blend them with the white to avoid a sharp stripe space in the middle, thus giving a more realistic look.

The idea is to create lights and shadows to simulate the effect when sunlight naturally hits the flowers. The blending effect is more appreciated when you see it from afar, in fact, if you look at these flowers up close, you can see the strokes of colour pencil but still nicely blended. 

I decided to fussy cut the flowers because I wanted minimum edge on them. I cut a piece of Bazzil cardstock in teal with the Wonky Stitched Rectangle die from My Favourite Things Stamps and randomly sprinkled white gouache. Once it dried, I arranged and adhered the flowers on opposite corners of the main panel using Glue Dots. I didn’t want to cover the flowers at all (it was a lot of work and I wanted everything to show 😊), so I chose a small sentiment from the Studio Katia set and white embossed in black cardstock. 

Finally, I added a few embellishments, also from Studio Katia to give a little spark.

That morning when I saw the picture of that young lady wearing such a unique dress, I immediately thought about recreating those colours and theme in a card, as you can see, we can find inspiration from quite unlikely sources. 

I am very happy with the result; I hope you like it too. 

Thanks for stopping by. See you next time!

Monica

If you are curious about that dress and the girl who was wearing it, here is a pic!