Beautiful Bold Botanicals

Got the chance to play with the Botanical Builder Framelits today!

I had planned to incorporate the last woodgrain background I had created in my Rustic Wooden Valentine post but working with the woodgrain piece, I found out that it was too "heavy" for my design. Once I simplified my design idea, things came together quite quickly!

I cut a standard Basic Black card base and then a Melon Mambo matte. I chose a piece of Smoky Slate card stock to be the top matte and this is the piece I cut with the leaf edgelit die from the set.

I used Fast Fuse Adhesive to adhere the die cut matte to the Melon Mambo matte and then used glue dots to adhere a strip of the Silver Sequin Trim along the curve of the die cut edge to add a bit of zing to the design.

I knew that I wanted to create a flower and leaf cluster for the top left of the card and balance it with a smaller cluster on the bottom right of the card. Rather than waste card stock, I die cut several pieces from scrap paper. Once I had my design figured out, I cut the pieces from card stock.

I die cut the largest flower (the one that has pop up pieces on the petals) from Basic Black card stock and cut the fancy stamen piece from Melon Mambo. I also cut two ferns from the Melon Mambo.
I used my McGill Paper Blossom Tool Kit to help me shape the petals a bit. This kit has proved invaluable to me since I really like to use flowers on my cards! Unfortunately, my tweezers from the set have gone missing :(

I also used my bone folder to give a little shape to the fern fronds. I adhered the flower using a Dimensional and then adhered the flower centre and the ferns with the Fine Tip Glue Pen. I added one of the Iced Rhinestones to the very centre of the flower.

For the arrangement on the bottom right of the card, I die cut one of the smaller flowers from Basic Black card stock as well as three little flower centres that I made into tiny flowers! I cut three tiny leaves from Smoky Slate and the twisted stamen centre from Melon Mambo. The flower was adhered with a Dimensional and all other pieces were adhered with the Fine Tip Glue Pen. I added rhinestones to the centres of each flower.

I stamped the sentiment, from the Bloomin' Love Stamp set, using Jet Black Stazon because I wanted it to be really black next to the black card stock flower.

For inside the card, I cut a matte from Whisper White and used a sponge to add Smoky Slate ink to the outer edges. I used the largest "leaf vein" stamp from the Botanical Blooms Stamp Set to stamp with Basic Black Archival ink and then used Melon Mambo and the tiny flower grouping stamp to stamp over top, stamping a few times before re-inking to give depth to the stamping. The matte was adhered with Fast Fuse Adhesive to finish the card.

Once the flower design was decided, this card went together quite quickly. I like the play of contrasts in the colors and the sparkle added by the rhinestones!

I'm submitting this card for The Paper Players Challenge #280.

I'm experimenting a bit with my pictures for my blog posts. I recently purchased a Foldio 2 for taking better photos of my cards. I am liking it very much, especially since it gives better lighting to the front of my cards than my other photo setup did.

For these photos I chose a black background, for a change, which may not be the best for a black card base but from where I am viewing the images, the two blacks are different and the black card can be distinguished from its black background. I hope this translates well on the web. Please drop me a comment below about my card photos to let me know what you think!