Hero Arts Flowers with watercolours!

Good Evening! 

During the weekend I wanted to do some water colouring and paint some flowers. I've had this flow of making scenery, holiday cards for Christmas and now I wanted to do something different. To get some inspiration I went through some really nice blogs and found some really nice challenges to which I wanted to participate. 

This first one was inspired by Fusion Card Challenge - Hardwood Florals! Perfect what I had in mind anyways! I took the sketch and the background and then I went through my stamps and found these Hero Arts Delicate Blossoms- stamp set. They are not near the flowers in the picture - but they'll have to do. I water coloured them with Distress Inks: Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire. I also found this Inkspirational #67- challenge which had a colour theme in this week's challenge: any shades of Purple and Silver! How pretty is that! I took the silver since I already had purple flowers and stamped this (just beautiful) woodgrain background stamp from Purple Onion Designs. I stamped it with Versamark and heat embossed it with Superfine Silver Embossing Powder by Ranger. Love that stuff, gives really crisp and detailed embossing. I inked white card stock with Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire Distress ink to create a border for my background. I die cut those little branches behind the flowers with Tiny Pine Cones- die by Marianne Design. I applied Versamark and black embossing powder and heat set it. For the sentiment I used a sentiment from Technique Tuesday's set called One of a Kind. The challenges graphics and the sketch is shown below.  

And this is my final card! I am pretty pleased for the fact that I really followed the sketch this time almost fully - I just changed the sentiment! LOL! 

My entry to the Fusion Card Challenge - Hardwood Florals
and to the Inkspirational #67.
This card got Honorable Mention at Fusion 
and was one of the top picks at Inspirational.

My second card was inspired by this week's CAS(E) this Sketch #96. Ingredients are the same - just a little bit different design and colour theme. I water coloured the flowers with Distress Inks: Spiced Marmalade, Rusty Hinge and Gathered Twigs. The little branches are die cut from craft card stock and sponged with Gathered Twigs to give some dimension. The background is stamped with Versafine Sepia ink. The sentiment is a bit old and bought in a local craft store. It says "To my Friend" in Finnish. The challege's graphics is shown below.

My entry to the CAS(E) this Sketch #96.
This card was CTS Favorite.

Here are the graphics for the challenges:

Thank you for stopping by today! I am always pleased to hear what you think. Happy crafting!

Marika