Flourishes Sneak Peek - Old Tea Rose

Here's a fun little secret I've been sitting on for a few months - dkdesigns has expanded again! Flourishes has a new illustrator, Sam Pickard, and I'll be designing the sentiments to go with her beautiful artwork each month! To celebrate, I'm joining along with the Flourishes designers for Day 2 of Flourishes Sneak Peeks for May!   Here is a peek at the brand new set:

It's a gorgeous new set that celebrates the majestic rose.  Artistically drawn by our new artist Sam Pickard, this old tea rose just begs to be colored with style. This elegant floral features three accent images, including a stately looking butterfly and five beautifully scripted sentiments - all on a 4 by 6" set. This set will also have a Silhouette Cut file available as well for wonderful creative options!  You can find out more about our new Illustrator Sam Pickard HERE.

Sam's artwork is fresh, modern, and absolutely fascinating. The sketches and color studies that she shares on her blog are really inspiring as well. She's already well known for her fabric and wallpaper designs, and I'm thrilled that we have the opportunity to work with her designs in our papercrafting projects, too!

I wanted to create something 'different' with the set, and had a frame concept in mind to highlight this larger sentiment. Someone will surely scold me for not taking pictures along the way as this came together... let me just say there were more than a few times that I almost threw it in the trash, so I'm content to save the lessons I learned for a tutorial next time.

I started with a chipboard frame that I cut from a cereal box, and a piece of watercolor paper the same size. I diecut the square opening with those 2 pieces adhered together. I stamped the rose image, and a few scattered leaves and buds, around the frame, and watercolored the panel using Distress reinkers and a Derwent Graphitint pencil (water-soluble graphite pencils in dark earthy tones).

When the panel was dry, I took a piece of white tissue paper and crumpled it into a ball, then smoothed it out slightly. I used watered-down PVA glue on the frame and on top of the tissue paper to adhere to the frame, and wrapped the excess to the back.

I dried the glue with my heat gun, and then distressed the front of my frame with just tiny bits of white acrylic paint, rubbed with my finger over the wrinkles in the tissue paper. I love the antiqued look this gives, and also the depth that it adds to the project. I inked up one of the text stamps from the set, and just stamped small areas of the stamp to add some texture.

The butterflies are from Pink Paislee - I actually rubbed a little white paint on them too so they faded in a little better. The final step was adhering the random pearls, and layering the mat and sentiment! The sentiment is stamped on a piece of DP from Memory Box that had a distressed look to it.

When it comes to the Old Tea Rose set, you'll want to see all beautiful inspiration that the Design Team has for you with this set, and you'll want to be sure to comment because...

One Design Team Member is the Mystery Blogger of the day!  That means commenting on her blog puts you in the running to win you today's Old Tea Rose Stamp Set!   You'll have to comment to find out who it is!

Want to see all the beautiful things you can create with this gorgeous flower? We love it so much we've invited some extra friends to the party.  Head on over and see…..

• Friends of Flourishes Team Coordinator Allison Cope
• Christine Okken
• Cindy Lawrence
• Danielle Kennedy
• Heather Jensen
• Julie Koerber
• Maki Jones
• Silke Ledlow
• Stacy Morgan
• and BWT Team Member Dina Kowal  (you're here!!)

Do you want to win Flourishes' May Release? 

If you want a chance to win all four of Flourishes' soon-to-be released May sets, you can always play in the Colorful Creations Challenge – there will be multiple winners there! OR, play along with the gals for this week’s Timeless Tuesday Challenge! Check out the links for the official rules! Also, if you like what you see on our designers’ blogs today, you can pre-order this set (along with the other three sets as well). You can also take advantage our New Release Bundle and get 10% off when you purchase all four together in a bundle. All sets will be live first thing Friday morning along with the coordinating cut files for this release. So, be sure to stick with Flourishes this week as they unveil a whole new host of paper-crafting fun!