Overcoming My Fear...

Ok, not a bad opening line, huh? Did I get your attention? Lol :) Fear never makes sense, after you've overcome it, does it?  My fear? Coloring my images in with bold colors. Completely silly and unrealistic. I just couldn't get over it no matter how hard I tried. I would always start coloring my images in with the best of intentions to "Go Bold Or Go Home" approach, but would always "pull back". I often envied others who could do it and make it look great. I have many, many people I look up to who love color and are not afraid of it. And though I tried to emulate them, but just couldn't get my images to look like theirs. So how did I conquer this stumbling block? It started innocently enough, I saw a challenge that Flourishes was featuring on their blog: Feature flowers in some way. Sounds innocent enough, right? So I found some flocked MME (My Mind's Eye) "Lush" paper in my stash that I wanted to use, and tried to find a flower stamp I had that I could use with it. I don't have many Flourishes flower stamps, but I kept going back to their "Sweet Pea" set. Not that I didn't like it, I just thought that Sweet Pea flowers are usually a light pink color and it would be too light for the paper I was using. After some thought, I realized that I was going to have to try to color it in darker then I normally would like to, so it would match the paper better. You may think, oh well, it's just pink, no big color deal :) But I love to paint things in realistically so this was a big artistic leap for me, as I would've colored it in much lighter then this :)
Sweetpea Birthday:

*This little decision kinda freed me and inspired me to create my next card I will be featuring at the bottom of this post.**
After stamping out the image, I cut it out with my craft knife and put it on popdots to elevate it off the paper. I sponged the background paper, under the flowers, in Versa Magic "Pixie Dust", for some color. When I colored the flowers in, I only used three Tombow markers: 772, 850 & 098. The pearls are from Prima and the hat pin is from a trip to Le Temple du Scrap in Paris. I hoard those pins like Crazy, I love them so much!! The flat pink ribbon is from My Favorite Things, and let me tell you, I wish I had bought more of that stuff, it's AMAZING! But since I bought it from their clearance bin, there are no more left. My favorite part of this card is the ruffled pink ribbon at the bottom. Would you believe I bought that from a Garage Sale? LOVE IT! It's really that intense pink, and I was worried that I wouldn't find any paper that bold  (I avoid bold colors remember), but I think it works great with this paper and this whole card look. I think I just got lucky, thank goodness for that :)

I love how this inside turned out with the corner brackets, from HOTP (Hot off the Press) "Corners & Medallions" set. I really think they add to the decorative element inside. The Happy Birthday is from Impression Obsession.
I really love how this card turned out, and I learned somethings along the way. I love cards like that! :)



As I mentioned, after making my "Sweetpea Birthday" card, I really wanted to explore coloring an image in with more color. I had a stamp, also from Flourishes, called "Winter Bouquet" that I thought would be perfect for this expirament. I had this tamp for 6 months but could not seem to color it in right. I realized that not only was I worried about the bold colors, I was also letting myself get hung up on the "right" & "wrong" colors to use on something. So to really do it "right' I had to let go of my issues of everything looking realistic, just paint and take a few artistic liberties along the way :)
That being said, this was a huge bear of a card that I made many mistakes on. I had this idea of making a black & white card with red accents. So guess what happens AFTER I'm done painting it all in? I find out that I Don't have any black & white paper... Lovely. I think the only out of place thing , here is, my use of black stamping ink because it was going to go with my black & white card theme. It doesn't look bad, but I think it would look better if it was stamped in Sepia. But that's just me trying to make it look real :)
Winter Bouquet:

I entered it in the Flourishes Winter challenges: use mostly white and feature a flower ( I mean lets make lemon aide out of oranges here ;).
I used my trusty Tombows and did very little blending, and matted the image in with a light rusty/cranberry CS. I embossed some Neenah "Solar White" paper with a Cuttlebug folder for some texture. I used my Classic Lace die from Spellbinders to make a fancy lace border, added some velvet rick-rack ribbon for more color on top of that, and added some Prima pearls for elegance.
A simple card to make that wasn't so simple to do :)


Who knew a simple challenge on a blog, could actually change my views on how I make my cards? What's silly is, is that I think it was necessary to go through. How else was I going to learn? :)