Pretty Floral Birthday Card Tutorial

Hello! I’m Terri Kelly of Veegstez Creates and I am delighted to be sharing my first monthly blog post for Kate Hadfield Designs. As it’s January and we are in the depths of Winter (it even snowed yesterday!) I chose to use images from the Winter Flora digital stamp set.

If you’ve not used digital stamps in your cardmaking before and are a bit nervous about using them, rest assured, it’s really easy! After downloading my stamps, I opened up a Text document (I use Open Office as I don’t have Microsoft Word) and simply dragged and dropped the images I wanted onto a blank page, in landscape mode. I reduced the margins to zero, so I had more space too.

I used the large corner vine leaf image in one corner of my page, as I knew I wanted to cut this into a square to use for my card panel. I resized the image to about 5.5 inches. The other images I thought I might use, I resized to the sizes I thought they should be in comparison to that.

I decided to use my Copic Ciao Alcohol Markers for this card, as this is one of my favourite ways to colour. I pulled out my swatch pack – what’s that you may ask?! – well it’s basically a load to tags held together with a book binding ring, with all of my Copic colours swatched onto it. I picked up this tip from a Cathy Zielske video and it makes the process of choosing colours soooo much easier. I really must get around to doing this with my other colouring mediums too! I picked out the greens I wanted to use for my vines: YG06, G02 G05,G07 & G17.

Now I am not a professional artist, but I do love to colour and get complimented on it a lot. There are so many different ways to colour so I’ll share a few ideas with you today around what I do. I first started to colour the the top leaf, by applying my lightest colour in the areas I thought would be lightest. I then applied the next lightest colour next to the lightest areas, overlapping slightly. I then went back to my lightest and blended the two together. I then added the third lightest (G05) next to this and more toward the centre of the leaf, where due to there being a dipped area, it will be darkest. I then added the second darkest and finally the darkest, right down the centre of the leaf. I then started to blend out from dark to light, stepping down one colour each time, finishing with YG06.

On the next leaf, I did the same process but in reverse. I started with the darkest colour G17 in the areas I thought would be darkest – down the centre fold of the leaf again, along with the curve of the base of the leaf and parts of the sides of the leaf. I then used the next darkest colour over top of the darkest and pulled it outwards a bit with the brush. I continued this going from darkest to lightest, ensuring I left space for the lightest parts of the leaf. We can always make images darker, but it’s much more tricky to lighten them, which is why it is sometimes easier to colour the way I did the first leaf. There is no wrong way and I like to switch it up depending on what my hand reaches for when I sit down to colour. As you can see in pic 13, there isn’t much difference between the final result. I then continued on with the rest of the leaves and the stems. The basic principle is the same, using the darker colours where there would be cast shadow from a leaf above perhaps, and using lighter colours along the curly parts, which would catch the light more.

Next I chose my colours for the two blooms with the two different layers of petals. I chose pinky purples and yellows for the centre parts. For the inner petals I used the darkest colour (RV14) in the areas I thought would be darkest, then RV13 and RV02 (which is much lighter), for the rest of the inner petals. I overlapped and pulled out the RV14 with the RV13, and areas that were curved upwards and some of the edges, I left blank and pulled out the RV13 with the RV02. Sometimes this was too light, so I added a bit of extra RV13. It is quite common with alcohol marker colouring to keep going over the same area multiple times, in order to achieve a smooth blend and transition.

For the outer petals, I used a flicking technique instead of colouring the entire petals, to give the effect of different pinkish colours on pale pink/white petals. I used RV000, RV02 and RV04. I started with the RV04 at the base of the petals and underneath the folded over petals. I then went in with the other two colours, adding more gentle flicks. It doesn’t matter which way you flick (towards or away from you) just find what works best for you and then be consistent with it, so move your paper around instead of getting into awkward hand positions. For the folded over portions of the petals, I used the lightest colour and just a hint of RV02 at the outer edge and blended the two together.

For the inner parts of the blooms, I used Y08, Y17 & Y21. I used the latter 2 colours on the inner most portions, with the darkest towards the centre, blending out with the lightest. I then used Y08 on the stamens.

For the three single petal blooms, which I wanted to be pale creamy colours, I initially chose 5 colours, with which to use the flicking technique previously described – 3 for the petals and 2 for the inner parts. I then added in 3 more colours for the petals, for more depth and dimension. I used the darker colours with broader stokes starting from the inner petals, gently lifting off the pressure further out into the petal.

After all my colouring was complete, I used a paper trimmer to cut out the corner of the card stock with the ivy in to 5.5 inches square. I then fussy cut the 5 blooms. I decided to add my completed panel onto a 6 inch square card blank, so I cut a mat for my ivy panel from a coral pink textured card stock which matched the colours in the pink blooms to be between 5.5 and 6 inches square. I found a nice sized Happy Birthday sentiment in my stash and stamped that onto the card panel with the ivy in the top right hand corner, after deciding where I wanted each of my blooms to be positioned. After gluing the ivy card panel on to the pink mat and the pink mat onto the card blank, I adhered two of the cream coloured blooms directly to the card with wet glue. I then mounted the other 3 blooms onto the card using foam squares and wet glue. I finished off the card with 3 sequins with an ab finish, which reflect the light around them, for some subtle sparkle.

The card is now complete! It was a joy to colour up Kate’s beautiful digital stamps. I printed them onto a heavyweight smooth card stock, which is perfect for this type of colouring and my basic home printer was perfectly capable of pulling through the thick cardstock and the ink did not smudge at all.

I hope you enjoyed this step by step colouring and card making tutorial and I look forward to my next blog post after I have played with some more of Kate’s stunning designs.

Happy crafting and see you again soon,
Terri/Veegstez Creates xxx

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