Inspired by... A Peony

Hello all! Welcome to the second installment of.... HUES TO USE... a little challenge of sorts where we throw three colors at you each week in hopes that these shades will give rise to some cataclysmic color expression in your very own craft room! 

Today is not even close to a stretch for us. In fact, the source of inspiration is one that melts Marcy's heart every time she sets her sights on one of these beauties!

Take a gander at this larger than life beauty -- will you? And those colors! Those colors are like buttah! I am going to call them Sugar Sweet Pink, Goldenrod and Shades of Jade. Back to that bloom, if you spotted this 'Coral Supreme' Peony on Marella's Insta-feed then you probably remember her saying something unbelievable like "this little guy is actually the size of an espresso cup!' Huh? That is a small but mighty bodacious blossom if I ever saw one! And now, you get to use this fierce floral as your "color muse" in Hues to Use! (See what I did there?)

Moving on to my own creation! I have a fast-paced double tutorial here. Super easy stuff, yet super fun as well.  For starters, here's a peek at my finished creation! 

As you can see, I used this stamp set -- Soothing Sympathy -- for my card! This was going to a friend who has been battling some serious stuff in life - not a loss per se -- but facing a medical issue with her husband that has been so heartbreaking. Since she lives in Idaho, I decided to put some prayers in a card, smack a stamp on it and send it off to her to hopefully lift her spirits a bit. You'll notice, if you look at the stamp set below, I did a bit of masking when using the small peony in the stamp set. 

So, just like how most masking begins, I grabbed a Post-It Note and stamped that Peony at the top, where the sticky portion is. And then, since I only needed to mask the top, I only cut out the stop of my mask. See?

From there, I added the mask, stamped and kept on doing this until I had a peony border all along the left side of my card....

From there, I decided that I wanted to create an effect where the sentiment "Sending Love & Light" had almost a cascading effect using two different shades of ink -- a soft shade (Angel Pink Memento) and one that stood out (Tuxedo Black Memento). So, I lined up my card front in the MISTI, securing it with the MISTI's magnets, like so!

Then, lining up my sentiment exactly where I wanted it on the acrylic portion of the MISTI, I inked it up in pink and started to stamp! 

Now, to create this cascading effect, I simply moved my paper up 3 blocks on my grid, reinked, stamped, and repeated until I had a border of pink sentiments. I knew I wanted the second to the last stamped sentiment to be black. So, I kept inking up my stamp with pink ink, stamping all the way to the bottom and leaving a space for where my black inked sentiment would sit. I moved my paper up, cleaned my stamp, inked it in black and... ta da!!!! I have that punch of black, right in that cascading row. I realize it is somewhat hard to see that soft pink, but it is there and in real life it is just that sweet and soft touch, which I thought really added to this card! 

From there, I grabbed these Copic markers and got to coloring! R81, R83, RV00, R0000, G20, G21, G24, Y13, Y35, G0000. I also added a little razzle dazzle thanks to some glitter glue to the stamens on the flower. You know I gotta have a little bling! ;-)

Here's a close-up look at the cascading sentiment....

Here's a close up of that flower to show off a bit of that masking effect....

And here's one last look at my card! 

So, grab the closest shades of Sugar Sweet Pink, Goldenrod and Shades of Jade and get that creatively colorful mojo a flowin'! I can't wait to see what you create using this trio of springtime colors!

An InLinkz Link-up

Thanks for stopping by!

~Julie