Always flowers

A huge thank you to everyone who voted for my card in last weeks Muse challenge.
It's a first for me to have a card selected in a challenge and I have been buzzing all week. I could enter more card challenges I guess - but I don't seem to get that organised.

Anyway, moving on. I loved the colours in Anita's card for this week's Muse challenge and how they contrasted so well with the white. I thought she must have embossed it, but when I read her post, it turns out she'd used a stencil ....

I have some stencils, bought in a rush of enthusiasm at seeing the results of others using them - but I've had little real success with them. I decided to give it another go.

So my inspiration from Anita's awesome card was firstly the colours, then the stencil, and also how she had  placed the stencil so the image was off-centre and not fully on the card.

This is what I finally came up with (after 2 earlier cards). I used a stencil I've had for years ... first card I've made with it 😊 - I used distress inks, and the sentiment is from a Jofy stamp set.
When I lifted the stencil I thought there was too much white & it looked wrong so I blended the inks on the white areas and into the stencilling a bit which softened the edges of the stencilling more.

I originally made a tall card but when I went to photograph it & do my blog post this morning I thought it would be better sideways.
So here's my original. Plus there's another where I stamped the sentiment on uppy-downy rather than sideways .... so I have a trio of flowery cards and heaps more practice using stencils.

This afternoon I'm off to a crafting session making a mini album with a masculine theme so hopefully I'll learn lots of new techniques and get lots of ideas for future crafty things.

Cheers, Dianne