I've been playing with some new stamps, new uses for old techniques and some new toys. The result? Seveal new cards to send to friends for various occasions

I had a birthday recently and among the wonderful gifts I received were some interesting stamps. Since I particularly love watercolour I was pleased that the sunflower set lent itself to using that medium,
Here are two of the cards that I created with the new stamps.

 

As anyone who knows me will tell you,  I am very fond of flowers. The more old fashioned, the better I love them. So, one of the sets I recently purchased features poppies. Here is what I did with that. Again, the medium is watercolour. In both cases, the watercolours were a combination of Winsor Newton pan waterclours and Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils. I used the Inktense to get the deeper tones. I could do it with tube watercolours but didn't want to mess with those just now. The cats would have loved it but the result might have been disasterous

I hope you like it. I thought it came out rather well..In fact I am going to have a hard time sending it on to the

person for whom I intended it.

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. Since I have been experimenting with watercolour, it seemed that I should see what I could do with it as a background. For the first card, I was looking for a graded multicolour background that wouldn't get muddy with the colours mixing. I used Winsor Newton pan watercolours here. The effect I wanted was that of a bird perching on a piling in the water, on a foggy evening just at sunset

For the second card, I used the washes from the pan that I mixed the colours in for the first card. The bird and the flowers were done using Peerless Watercolour papers.

I am particularly fond of Grapic 45 Scrapbook papers. I use them a lot in altered book  and other projects. I thought that the Botanical Tea papers were really beautiful and made several cards using them.

This one used the Crafter'sworkshop Chicken  wire die cut. I love the look

Here the card has a window with the Stampin' Up Hexagon embossing folder background

Another use of the Hexagon folder                                                     And here, just some layering

It's been fun doing these.  I hope you like them.