The illusion of layers

Hello, crafting friends!

I do love the challenge of a one layer card and am always trying to think up ways to add depth to them. Today I got my coloured pencils out to see what I could do with those.

To start, I masked off the left hand side and the bottom of a good thick card base. Using grey ink, I stamped the beautiful flower cluster from Uniko's Hello Lovely stamp set - I was lucky enough to win this set last year and just love it! With a variety of mauve and purple pencils, I used the cross hatching technique to build up a background, intensifying the colour closest to the flowers.

To colour my flowers, I used small round strokes of the pencils, layering up the colours and trying to leave paler areas where the petals might catch the light. To give the impression of looking in through an aperture, I drew a solid line at the left and bottom of my image.

The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted's Simply Said, stamped in Stazon black ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. Stamping it across the white part of the card and the 'aperture' helps to give the illusion of depth.

CHALLENGES

I'm entering this card in the Uniko 9th Birthday party celebrations where the challenge is to make a birthday card; talking of birthday celebrations, the Less is More birthday party continues with One Layer Week and a theme of Flowers; I'm also joining in with The Rainbow Card Challenge, where the colour prompt this month is Mostly Mauve. Addicted to Stamps and More are having an Any Occasion challenge this fortnight, so I'm also linking up there; I shall also link up at The Flower Challenge as this stamp is certainly one of the last floral stamps to enter my collection! (Probably could do with some more...!)

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I know lots of us crafters have struggled with a loss of mojo - I know I did last year. There was time to craft, and all this wonderful stuff to craft with, but I just felt this horrible lethargy that made me miserable. I don't know what changed but suddenly I'm now crafting like a maniac with one idea after the other chasing through my head and not enough time to put them all into action! I only mention this to give you hope that these things can pass.

The other thing is that although Eva (at 40 kilos) is not the kind of dog you pick up and tuck under your arm, I did have a laugh at this when I saw it on Pinterest!

Source: Pinterest

Sending hugs,