Flowering Flourishes stamp set

I have a few birthdays during January and straight after Christmas I was looking for some inspiration, I was looking for something different, something I haven't done before to start my year with a....bang...ping...I don't know what to call it. Then I was looking through a craft magazine (Craft Stamper) and there it was, although my card is different the inspiration came from there and then I put my twist to it.

My all time favourite die from Stampin' Up! is the top note die, I just love the shape, size and versatility of it and here it is being used in a way I had never tried before. I cut a template from the centre of a piece of card and kept both parts. I held the negative (often seen as the waste) over my card blank, this time an 8x8 inch square (mmm what a surprise, me using a square blank) and inked through the die cut, I used brushes for this, I graduated my three chosen inks across the die shape moving from bottom left to top right, I dried my ink thoroughly.Then using the positive part, the die cut itself I placed it roughly over the inked part and using a fine black pen drew around the die, lifting carefully and then replacing slightly differently, I did this three times in total and then added some hand doodles. With the die cut still covering the centre panel I inked up one of the flourishes from Flowering Flourishes stamp set and stamped off the top right hand corner and lower left corner. I added a stamped greeting to the lower left. I die cut two swirls from tissue paper and added these poking out from a cluster of paper flowers, one in the top corner and the cluster of flowers in the bottom left. A few pearls added to the stamp flourishes and tada, complete. 

Look at the gorgeous flourish and die cut flourish, you can also see the pearls here too.

The greeting and my attempt at doodling.

What do you think? Is this your cup of tea? Did you see the card I was inspired by in Craft Stamper?

Thank you for visiting my blog, until next time Happy Crafting, Dawn x