Shelly's Art: topiary

Monday, April 25, 2016

Monday, April 25, 2016

By Shelly

In: blog hop, friendship jar flowers, papertrey ink, topiary

Papertrey Ink April Blog Hop Challenge

It's time again for a Papertrey Ink blog hop. The image is above is what we are to use for inspiration to make a card. I have to say I really struggled with this one. We were given the photo early and I kept looking at it and nothing was entering my mind at all. Finally today I looked at it and and my light bulb turned on! I decided this image reminds me of a topiary! So thus the card below was born!

I took a few photos to show you just how this card came together.

(Sorry for the bad photo..I used my phone and apparently didn't have my hand steady! UGH!)
First I made a stencil using some circle dies. I sponged peeled paint distress ink within the circles letting the circles fall off the edge of the card a bit. This created my topiary base shape.
Then using various shades of green ink I stamped an image from PTI's Friendship Jar Flowers repeatedly randomly over the sphere shapes. I was sure to extend the stamp beyond the sponged sphere to hide the hard edge and give the appearance of leaves. Then I added the flower center stamp from the same set to stamp little red berries on top of the foliage.

I used the circles I had cut for my stencils as a mask so I could stamp my topiary trunk. I actually think this could have been done first prior to adding the foliage stamp. I used a balloon string stamped repeatedly to achieve the twisting trunk. I think if I were to do this again I would simply draw in the trunk with a fine point marker.

PTI's tiny tag die cut in terracotta tile card stock (with the top of the tag where the hole is cut off ) functioned well as a pot for my topiary. I rounded the two outside corners of the card for something different and inked the edges with brushed corduroy distress ink for some depth.

Whew! That was a tough one..I'm glad I made the deadline!

Supplies are listed and linked below: