Orange Flowers

Hi and welcome to our 400th sketch at Freshly Made Sketch Challenge!  It's a big week with some big prizes so I hope you'll head over to the challenge blog and check it out.  If you follow along, you'll know that our previous three sketches this month were from past challenges (Sketch #1/#100, Sketch #200 and Sketch #300).  This week we have a brand new sketch and it's wonderful!

I hadn't done any coloring at all since we lost our son in June.  I just couldn't bring myself to sit down and color, even though it is meant to be therapeutic.  So last weekend, I forced myself to sit down and pick up the Copics and this is the result.

And, even though I was incredibly rusty, it was quite calming to focus on nothing but laying down color.  I had no plan when I started - I just pulled out one of my favourite floral stamps sets, stamped a heap of images and picked up the markers.

Once I was finished coloring with markers, I went in with a dark blue Prismacolor pencil to add to the shadow areas.  I think I went a bit heavy in parts, but so be it.

To put the card together, I arranged all the die-cut images plus the embossed sentiment strip and put some Press n Seal over the top to hold them in the arrangement I wanted.  I then die-cut a piece of patterned paper and adhered the floral arrangement to the patterned paper piece.  To mimic the horizontal panel on the sketch, I added two score lines because I wanted to keep the card clean and let the flowers pop off the white card base.

I finished the card with some orange Nuvo Crystal Drops.

Thanks for visiting.  Head on over to the challenge blog and check out the wonderful cards made by the rest of the design team.  And here's a peek of what's on offer from our generous sponsors to some lucky players...

Products used:

Stamps:  In Bloom:  Addie's Garden (Winnie & Walter); Modern Petunias (WPlus9)
Ink:  Amalgam, Versamark
Cardstock:  White, Black, Watercolor Wash Brights (MFT)
Dies:  In Bloom:  Addie's Garden (Winnie & Walter); Inside/Out Stitched Squares (MFT)
Accessories:  Copics, White EP, Ripened Pumpkin Nuvo Crystal Drops

Karren