Today our son would have been 32 had he not died unexpectedly last summer, so I wasn’t sure whether I’d feel up to creating something in my craft studio for today’s blog.  I had considered a scrapbook page, but to be honest that’s still a hard task.  So in many ways having his birthday fall on a Monday when I usually show you a project I’ve created for the What Will You Stamp? Challenge Design Team, made that decision a little easier.

The challenge this week is WWYS168 – Climbing Orchid and I must admit orchids are not my favourite flower.  I’m a gerberer girl, and if they’re purple gerberers, even better.  Still, having played around with the images for while I have to say I’m really pleased with my final project, and there’s some more sneak peeks from the Stampin’ Up! 2018/2019 Annual Catalogue in there too.

Our son died as a result of complications arising from Type 1 diabetes and so I wanted my project to feature blue (the colour for diabetes awareness).  I found some lovely hardbacked notebooks in Walmart (one pink and one a beautiful blue) and from there the project seemed to design itself.

Rather than cover the notebook with Designer Series Paper I decided to wrap the front cover with a wide strip of Very Vanilla Card, attaching it to itself on the inside so that I had a sleeve that could slide on and off the cover.

I took a piece of Mint Macaron Card and with Multipurpose Liquid Glue (Tombow) attached some of this pretty ‘crocodile’ print from the new Tranquil Textures 12″ x 12″ Designer Series Paper Pack.  Then with Tear & Tape Adhesive I attached two lengths of new Night of Navy Medium Baker’s Twine down the left side before using more liquid glue to fix the layers to the Very Vanilla notebook sleeve.

The sentiment is another one from the new Enjoy Life Stamp Set, stamped onto a piece of Very Vanilla Card with Night of Navy ink and then cut out using my Big Shot and Magnetic Platform with the #3 circle die from the Stitched Shapes Framelits (counting from the smallest up).

As I said, orchids aren’t really my thing so a good friend had stamped some images for me onto Watercolor Paper.  I coloured the small orchid flower using an Aqua Painter with Blueberry Bushel ink, and painted two small leaves with Lemon Lime Twist and then Granny Apple Green ink and set it aside to dry.

TIP – I haven’t yet received my new ink pads so instead I used the brush tip of the Stampin’ Write Markers to scribble onto an acrylic block, and then picked the ink up with my Aqua Painter from there.

I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to finish the flower and then I saw it, an angel, right there in the middle of the flower!  Well that was the sign I needed.  Using Paper Snips I cut out the centre of one of the other flowers from the Watercolour Paper and pressed it onto the surface of a VersaMark Ink Pad.  Then I covered it with Gold Stampin’ Emboss Powder, tapped off the excess and melted the rest with my Heat Tool set on 2 (high).

As I don’t own the stamp set, I don’t own the coordinating Orchid Builder Framelits, so once the painted flower and leaves were dry I cut them out with Paper Snips.  I attached the leaves to the back of the flower with liquid glue before adding my gold embossed flower centre.  More liquid glue was used to add the assembled orchid to the sentiment where the lower petals seemed to have been designed to fit around the word beautiful, even though they were from two different stamp sets.

All that was left was to turn over the sentiment and flower and add some Stampin’ Dimensionals to the back so that I could fix the completed piece to the notebook sleeve.

So now I have gone from dreading trying to make something for today’s blog, to being calmed by the process, and uplifted by the final result.  I hope whatever stresses you have in your life today, you can find that element of peace for your heart.

CHALLENGE

I created this project for the What Will You Stamp? Challenge Design Team for WWYS168 – Climbing Orchid.  You’ll find more project inspiration from the rest of the team over on the blog.

If you have this stamp set we’d love to see what you can create.  Simply create a new project using at least one image from the set and then upload it to the challenge gallery.  On Sunday we’ll randomly choose one person to be our weekly winner and they’ll be invited to join us as our Guest Designer two weeks later.  They also get bragging rights and a winner’s badge to display on their social media.

Well that’s it from me for today.  I hope you’ll visit again tomorrow for more sneak peeks from the Stampin’ Up! 2018/2019 Annual Catalogue.