August Instant Garden Introduction: Pure Prairie Bouquet

Let’s start our week off with a “bang!”, shall we? How about a power-pack of color born from the flowering gifts of the land’s prairies, meadows, and roadsides. I’ve created a new bouquet for our August Instant Garden digital stamp introduction that will put you into a pure prairie state of mind. I know it did for me!

Inspiration for this new illustration was sparked by trips to our local park, where a prairie restoration has filled a large hillside with wonderful wildflowers, grasses, seedpods, butterflies, and bees. I walk there quite often and marvel at the sights, scents, and sounds. Returning to my own garden, I have planted lots of these prairie beauties, but in much tinier confines. Several weeks ago I went “out back” and plucked a big handful from my garden stash, and while not everything made the cut into the final drawing, I was definitely feeling the pull of these wildflower wonders.

From bee balm and tickseed to coneflower and milkweed, I got my initial bouquet sketched out “just so”. Then, as I do, I ended up erasing and redrawing parts of this thing until sadly, the sweet milkweed (orange flower in the upper left) didn’t make the cut. Maybe another day, milkweed! But I brought in prairie favorites like little bluestem, New England asters, purple prairie clover, and Indian paintbrush.

After getting it all to my liking, I got out my Sakura Micron pens (points ranging from 01 to 03mm), and inked it up. Here is a peek at the drawing before I erased the pencil.

Did I tell you that this one is power-packed? There is a LOT of activity in this bouquet — it almost guarantees a colorful card that will be filled with passion and life!

Introducing our newest digital stamp set, Pure Prairie Bouquet!

I told you that it’s colorful — holy moly! And if you want to see the true definition of the word “awesome”, you have to come see what our Instant Gardener team has come up with using Pure Prairie Bouquet.

Today you’ll get to see even more beauty, because guess what? We are welcoming a new member to our Instant Gardener digital stamp release team. We’ve been admiring her work and ogling her incredible coloring for months now, and we just couldn’t stand by another minute before asking Jessie Banks to join us. Please welcome Jessie over on her blog today, as she is even along for today’s introduction, setting right to work on Pure Prairie Bouquet. And we are so excited to announce that Jessie will also be joining us with helpful tutorials and fresh ideas for Inspire Me Monday here at Power Poppy.

A few words from Jessie:

Hey everyone! I am absolutely thrilled and honoured to be part of the Power Poppy Family. Ironically I coloured my first Power Poppy image in August of last year so its been one year since I first started colouring these images! I have loved the flowers from this company! I enjoy all sorts of mediums, copic, coloured pencils, watercolours, I have recently started dabbling in pastel pencils and I thrilled to be able to share them all with you! I have been colouring and card making for about 5 years now, and enjoy every moment of it!

Visit Jessie Banks’ blog here.


Now, to the full blogroll for today’s digi release... are you ready to roll?

Cheryl Scrivens

Debbie Olson

Jennifer Dove

Broni Holcombe

Barb Walker

Nancy Sheads

Jessie Banks

I even spent a little time coloring in this image, you may have spied it on my Instagram (@marcellahawley) a few weeks ago, as I posted it during Kathy Racoosin’s Daily Marker 30 Day Coloring Challenge. I hadn’t painted with gouache in quite a while, so I armed myself with some juicy new paints and had a ball getting down to business with this new illustration....

If you like the prairie feel of this drawing, you’ll want to stay close to Power Poppy this week. TOMORROW we launch our August Clear Stamp previews with the Bloom Brigade, and Friday is our big release day of three new sets. The Nature and Nurture Collection is coming, and I think there’s a lot to love about what we have for you!!! See you back here soon, I hope! For now, let’s go see what the IG team has lovingly created for us....