Stencil Brushes are my new obsession.

Hi! Back again with a project that started as a piece for #thedailymarker30day over on Instagram. Last week, I colored this lovely dahlia image from Wplus9's Beautiful Bouquet: Dahlia set. I really love this new design line from Wplus9 and hope that Dawn continues to release these bouquets. So very gorgeous and such fun to color! 

I started by heat embossing the dahlia image onto a scrap of watercolor paper. I knew I wanted to fussy cut it, so I didn't need to waste a whole A2 panel. I colored it, using my Zig markers (obvs) in shades of peach and yellow... such happy, sunny colors. Then, I fussy cut the image. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do at this point... but enter the next mail day, when I received my Clarity Stencil Brushes. Boy oh boy, are those things a game changer for me and my ink blending. 

I decided to do a little halo of a pale peach behind my bouquet to highlight it without overwhelming the entirety of the card. I LOVE that you can achieve such subtlety without having to blend an entire card panel because you get circular sponge marks in your attempts to be light of hand. I simply started approximately where I wanted to have the center of my bouquet (using Hero Arts Fresh Peach ink) and blended out in a circle, going back over it a couple of times with my brush, because it was almost too subtle after the first layer. The greeting is from the PTI Make It Market kit "Don't Forget to Write." I die cut the "Sending" from silver glitter card stock, then die cut another from thin chipboard, the same chipboard I used to add the tiniest bit of dimension to the back of the dahlia bouquet. I knew I wanted the "sending" to overlap the bouquet, so I simply cut off the top part of the chipboard "g" and glued the rest down, which allowed me to adhere the top of the "g" directly to the dahlia bouquet without having strange bumps and thicknesses. The last little touch was to add some peach sequins from my stash of mixes by Lucy Abrams. 

I hope you enjoyed this finished project! I'm still playing along with #thedailymarker30day every day, and I hope that I can continue through the end of the month! Thanks for dropping by! :)