Inspired by an English Garden - the 2016 edit

Much of my crating inspiration last year came from our weekend visits to gardens - and now we have all week to enjoy  them, there could well be even more! This year's inspiration has already started, thanks to the beautiful gardens at Nymans.

There were some magnificent magnolia trees - Mark took this beautiful photo:

And I couldn't resist digging out a very old stamp of a magnolia (not to be confused with a Magnolia Stamp!) - an old UM, so I can't remember the manufacturer.

First of all I stamped it on a pink background, thinking it would go well with the colour of the flowers, and used white and dark pink pencils to add a little variation to the petals

Then I looked again at the photo - that beautiful blue sky made a wonderful background for the flowers, didn't it? But I wasn't sure I would be able to colour flowers that had been stamped on blue, without them looking too blue or mauve themselves, so as well as stamping it on blue, I stamped on a piece of white card so if necessary I would be able to colour and paper piece the flowers if necessary. However I hoped it wouldn't be, as paper piecing isn't really a major skill of mine, to put it mildly....

I tested various combinations of pens, pencils and inks on a scrap of blue paper, and found that a base layer of a deep pink Cricut fine-tipped pen  partially covered with white gel pen, thinly in some areas and thickly in others, gave a lovely shaded pink to the flowers. Also for my second card I completely covered the pink base card with blue before adding the top panel.

There - I'm much happier with that one! Here they are side by side to compare:

I am sharing the blue card with:

Less is More - White space but not white
CAS on Sunday - Flowers