Beautiful by Gill Humphrey

As I prepared this project I was unaware that Craft Stamper would be featuring the wonderful floral stamps by Melina and also that they would be an ODS on Hochanda so there is very definitely a lot of inspiration out their for these stamps. I hope that you will agree that my project is completely different to the magazine and television samples and that it will encourage some of you to take your stamps and use them off the page. 

To make my piece I took a glass pot - the type that comes with oils and scent reeds and measured the flat surfaces to get the correct dimensions for my card panels. I stencilled through the That's Crafty! Dinky Bubbly All Over Stencil using Ranger Antique Linen Distress Oxide. I layered over this Studiolight Stencil Grunge 28 and added colour using a lilac shade of 13 Arts Chalk Spray. The panels were then overstamped with one of the stamps from Melina Dahl Flower Collection Set 7 using Ranger Archival Ink in Emerald Green. I then chose a word for each panel from the That's Crafty! Lots of Words stamp set  before adhering a panel to each side of my "vase". To complete the base I then adhered some twine around the neck of the pot.

To fill my pot I selected the poppy stamp from the same stamp set and stamped this twice onto watercolour card using Ranger Archival Ink in Shadow Grey which comes as part of a set of 4 before colouring the flowers with the same chalk spray that I had used on the panels. The seed pod was coloured with Antique Linen Distress Ink. I coloured the leaves with shades of green Ranger Distress Oxides. I then fussy cut out one complete image and adhered this to a piece of construction weight acetate for strength. I cut extra flower elements from the second image, shaped them using a ball tool and added them to the flowers. 

I adhered sisal to the mouth of the vase using a dimensional glue and stuck my floral piece in, adhering some of the sisal to the back of the piece for added stability. I finished by adding some coloured to matched dimensional plaster elements that were in my stash.