It’s time for another post with my around the world demonstrator friends from Your Creative Connection. This week’s theme is “Something Old & Something New “.  For each theme, we get to interpret it however we see fit.  I decided to take this theme literally and use a new stamp set and an old stamp set.  On my card below, I’ve used the old (yet still available) stamp set, Birch background, and for the new stamp set , I’ve used the Prized Peony.

I love Peonies so when I saw this new stamp set in the catalogue, I just had to have it!! It also has wonderful sayings, including the sympathy saying I used on my Peony card.  And although I made a sympathy card, this would be wonderful as a birthday card, a thank you card, or just a ‘thinking of you’ card.

There is also a bundle available (and that means 10% off) with the Prized Peony stamp set and the Peony Dies.  I used the dies to cut out my watercoloured image. Plus you could consider getting this bundle for FREE as part of this month’s new demonstrator promotion (see details here).

I knew I wanted to to a traditional pink peony, so I decided to watercolour the image so I could use Blushing Bride as my base tone.  You can see the full list of supplies I used at the end of this post.

Here’s how I made this card:

1. I stamped my image with Black Staz On ink on Shimmery White Paper. Then I let it dry a little bit.
2. I put a little bit of Blushing Bride ink refill in the lid of my Blushing Bride ink pad.  Then I used an aqua painter to pick up just a little bit of the ink refill.
3. I watered down the ink refill a little bit with my aqua painter and then coloured the entire image with this light colour.
4. I then repeated step 2 with Rococo Rose and Melon Mambo adding just small bits of darkness to the bottom layer of petals and the dark bits that the artist added to the stamp.
5. I also used my aqua painter to remove some of the ink from the tips of some of the petals as I noticed the peonies in my garden have a fair amount of white to them.
6. I did the same technique with the stem and leaves using Old Olive and Mossy Meadow ink refills.
7. Once my image was dry, I die cut it out using the matching Peony Dies.
8. I stamped the birch image in the background with Crumb Cake ink. I used my Stamparatus to perfectly align the image (see more about the Stamparatus here). And then lightly sponged the edges of my white cardstock with Crumb Cake ink.
9. I die cut the stitched label from Crumb Cake cardstock.  I stamped the saying from the Prized Peonies stamp set with Early Espresso ink.
10. I added the peony to the front of the card with dimensionals (the mini dimensionals came in handy for the little wee areas.).

I love how this card turned out for the “something old and something new” theme. It is like these two stamp sets are made for each other. My card is soft looking and although there is a little bit of shine from the Shimmery White paper I used, it still has the right tone for a sympathy card.  The Birch background stamp gives it a subtle and woodsy feel to the card.

Check out what my fellow demonstrators did with this theme.  And be sure to check out the complete supply list for my Peony card below.

Your next stop on the Your Creative Connection tour is the lovely Jennifer Pauli from Germany!

If you get lost in your travels, here’s a complete list of everyone on this tour…

• Dawn Olchefske – USA
• Barbara Meyer – Austria
• Kristine McNickle – New Zealand
• Jenn Tinline – Canada * YOU ARE HERE*
• Jennifer Pauli – Germany
• Janneke Dijkstra – de Jong – Netherlands
• Michelle Last – UK
• – Australia

See the last Creative Connection Tour here (its a wedding card).

To shop for any of the items on this Prized Peony sympathy card, you can visit my Online Store here.

Product List