Red And Green Vintage Garden Hugs Card

I send out a card to my daughter who is deployed each time I send her a care package, and I send out 1-2 care packages a week, so this is card #17 for this deployment! 😄 

I have recently been playing with Altenew's Vintage Garden stamp set, and I thought I would see how it worked to stamp the images using red ink on the flower and green ink on the leaves by simply tapping the mini ink cubes over the flowers and leaves separately. It wasn't perfect in the places where the leaves met the flowers, but I felt like it worked well anyway. I really liked the look it created, and it was a nice change from just using black ink for the entire image.

After stamping the flowers, I used the coordinating dies to die cut them and then used the coordinating stencils to color them. The coordinating stencils leave a lot of white space, and at first I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but in the end, I like that it's a little different from so many of my other floral stamp sets. 

Once I had the flowers done, I also stamped the other leaves in the stamp set using the same green ink I had used on the large floral images. I die cut them and added a bit of color to them with the coordinating stencils, too. 

In using this set for previous cards, I have trimmed the largest floral focal point to fit an A2 card or used the smaller flower on an A2 card, but for this card, I wanted to use all 3 flowers and extra leaf die cuts from the set. It meant creating a card base that is 7 1/2 inches by 4 3/4 inches, an unusual size for a card to be sure! But I happen to have some oversized envelopes, and this is going into a box rather than being mailed in the envelope I put it in, so I'm fine with it being bigger than usual. 

I used some heavy weight white card stock to create the card base and then added a piece of plain red cardstock to cover the front of the card base. I then added a piece of watercolor cardstock that I had sprayed with Tim Holtz's Peppermint Distress Mica Stain. I love the look of the Peppermint Distress Mica Stain! It's got a beautiful shine when you see it in real life. 

I arranged the flowers and leaves where I wanted them on the panel and used a piece of Glad Press N Seal to hold everything together as I added liquid glue to some places and foam tape to others to add dimension to the stamped images. 

For the sentiment, I used the "Hugs" die from Altenew's Watercolor Roses set and die cut it multiple times to stack the dies and give the sentiment some dimension. For the green in the top layer of the die cut word, I swiped my ink pad over some white cardstock and then die cut the word from the inked cardstock. 

To finish the card, I added several of Altenew's Emerald City Gem Sparkles on the top left, bottom right, and the flower centers. I used the darkest shade for the corners and the middle shade for the flower centers. 

Close ups:

 Challenges I'm entering: 

Gem of A Craft Challenge (pinkgemchallengeblog.blogspot.com): ATG (2/4; ends 11/8/24)

Polkadoodles Cardmaking, Craft & Scrapbooking Challenge: ATG (3/4; ends 11/8/24)

613 Avenue Create (avenue613.blogspot.com): ATG with twist of lots of leaves (2/8; ends at the end of the month)

We Love to Create mixed media Challenge Blog...sponsored by Polkadoodles (welove2create.blogspot.com): ATG (2/2; ends at the end of November)

We Love Stamping: Autumn or ATG (3/3; ends at the end of the month)

A Place To Start (hereisaplacetostart.blogspot.com): ATG with optional theme of use some pink (ends at the end of the month)

Crazy is our fame - STENCILS are our game! (stencilfun.blogspot.com): ATG with stencils with an optional twist of Halloween (I used the coordinating stencils to color the flowers and leaves) (1/3; ends at the end of the month)

Word Art Wednesday: ATG (4/5 for the week; 4/10 for the challenge; ends 11/6/24)

Beautiful Blossoms Challenge: ATG with flowers as the focus (1/6; ends 11/12/24)