Sketchy Tulips

What happened to spring? All of the sudden we are back in the 40's! I want my 60's and 70's to come back. Right. Now! Alright now that I have yelled at Mother Nature and I shiver from the cold, let me get to today's post.

I don't play in the Mojo Monday Sketch Challenges every week like I want to, but I made the extra effort and went for it this week. The Mojo Monday Sketch Challenge #133 was a bit of a challenge for me. I like most of what I came up with, but I will be honest and say I feel like it is missing something. But since I am not one to go back to cards, this is where it stays.

A friend of mine gave me a very old retired SU! stamp set, Early Spring, and with the cold weather I was drawn to the images to make me feel better. I chose the image of the tulips, stamped it in Brilliance Graphite Black, and cut it out with Oval Nestabilities. I stamped it a couple more times and colored just the tulips with a blender pen and ink pads. Then came the tedious part of cutting out the flowers! But I did it and I love how the apricot tulips leave the oval area and the single red tulip completely stands out. The apricot tulips were glued directly to the oval, but the red tulip was popped up on dimensionals.

My panels used Apricot Appeal patterned paper from the Hostess Pack last year along with a strip of black and some very worn and crumpled Real Red. I crumpled my Real Red strips a whole lot and then peeled the strip apart (the paper starts to separate when you crumple it a lot) to get a fuzzy sort of texture to the paper. The same was done to get the horizontal strip of Real Red. Then I added my black satin ribbon...but I wanted to try and do a pleated ribbon. Which I did, but unfortunately the main oval kind of covered a lot of it up so I am not sure it was necessary. Cool though, so I will have to try doing it again sometime! Then I added my rhinestone flourishes. I went to Archiver's that night and found some Jewel Templates by Bazzill...very cool. Templates made so you can make your own flourishes (they have other shapes too) in any color you want...and you could use it for brads, eyelets, pearls, etc. So I used that along with some Bazzill Blackbird jewels to make them. This flourish used the smaller jewels and I felt it was a little spaced out, so I added white dots in between to try and tie my white elements in a little bit better.

That is it...sorry I feel like I was chatty today...maybe because there are not any kids around to tell me to stop...love my free days! See you tomorrow for Sweet Stop Saturday and thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Early Spring (SU!); Paper - Basic White (Papertrey Ink), Apricot Appeal, Real Red, Basic Black, Whisper White, Apricot Appeal Patterned Paper (SU!); Ink - Brilliance Graphite Black, Real Red, Apricot Appeal (SU!); Accessories - Oval Nestabilities (Spellbinders), Blender Pen (SU!), Corner Rounder (SU!), Signo White Gel Pen, Black Satin Ribbon (Offray), Blackbird Self-Adhesive Jewels (Bazzill Basics Paper), Flowers and Flourishes Jewel Template (Bazzill Basics Paper), dimensionals