Playing with Pleasant Poppies - Day 1

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Good morning!  While most people grumbled about the wicked weather of these past few days, I called into work for a day of PTO, flipped on the fireplace, opened the blinds (so I could watch the storm) and got down to playing.  I had bought the background stamp Pleasant Poppies when it first came out because poppies always remind me of the train rides I took across Italy a few years back.  Poppies always look so happy, and so light & playful.  But, as sometimes happens, the stamp set got pushed aside in the busy-ness of everyday life & I never used it.  So, I decided to dust it off and put it to use.  And the end result is that I have four great cards to share with you, so check back in the coming days for more fruits of my labor.

To create this card, I used:
Paper: Whisper White, Poppy Parade (retired), Marina Mist, and Basic Black cardstock
Ink: Old Olive marker, Marina Mist & Poppy Parade ink refills, black craft ink, Island Indigo marker
Stamps: Pleasant Poppies (background stamp)
Other: adhesive (snail and sticky strip), black embossing powder & heat tool, aqua painter, color spritzer tool

Steps & Tips: 

• Cut the Whisper White layer - I used 4.75"x3.5".
  Heat emboss the Pleasant Poppies image with Basic Black Craft ink & Black embossing powder.
• Using your Aqua Painter & a small amount of Marina Mist ink refill, lightly watercolor the background with Marina Mist ink.
• When the paper dries, color in the stems with Old Olive marker.  Use your Aqua Painter and Poppy Parada ink refill to watercolor in the image.  I like a bolder image, so I used the refill straight out of the bottle.  If you like a softer image, dilute it with water.
• Once the image is dry, use your Color Spritz tool & Island Indigo marker to spritz a little color here and there to add a bit of interest.  Set aside for a few minutes so the spritz can dry.
• While you are waiting for the drying process in the steps above, you can assemble your card.  My card is just half of an 8.5"x11" sheet of Basic Black cardstock, cut in half.  The half is then folded in half, so you end up with a 4.25"x5.5" card, which fits perfectly in our envelopes.  The Poppy Parade strip is 4.25"x2.5".  The Marina Mist layer is 1/8" larger on all sides than the Whiper White layer.
• Tip:  The paper curled a bit because of the watercolor technique, so I used sticky strip (which is a bit stronger than Snail) to adhere the Whisper White layer to the Marina Mist layer.  And then I used snail adhesive for the rest of the layers.