Blooming Inspiration: Creating with Natalie Ballard's 'Inner Scents of Flowers

Hello everyone on this beautiful sunny day! I'm so excited to share my latest creative adventure with you. My lovely friend, the incredibly talented Natalie Ballard, asked me to play with her brand new 'Inner Scents of Flowers' collection for Go Create Craft, and of course, I jumped at the chance! Not only are these stamps and stencils absolutely gorgeous, but it's always a joy to support a friend's passion.

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The 'Inner Scents of Flowers' collection is just bursting with inspiration because Natalie has created wonderful YouTube tutorials to inspire you from the "get go". The floral designs are so versatile, and the stencils add a beautiful layer of texture and depth. I immediately started picturing all the different ways I could use them to create unique and heartfelt cards.

Idea #1: If friends were flowers ...

For this card, I created some masks of the larger flowers and began creating my arrangement to be in opposite corners. The top arrangement design was stamped out on a separate piece of card and I cut around this.

Now the reason I did this was that I wanted to create an inky background and this was easier if there was nothing in the way! I layered this piece up with 3D foam pads. I stamped the sentiment on another piece of card & added with 3D foam pads.

Now there is a matching stencil to help colour the flowers - Inner Scents of Flowers Layering Stencil - but I choose to colour in my flowers with my Kuretake Clean Color pens, to show that you can!

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Idea #2: Bloom in wonderful colour

I really wanted to create a DL card that was all about layering the images on top of each other in a tumbling design. I stamped out the large flower & leaf multiple times with distress inks. My reason for this was to not have black outlines on the flowers and leaves but the colour they were going to be - I hope that makes sense? I have used the Inner Scents of Flowers Layering Stencil with the same distress inks to colour all the images.

When I layered the design up for a "dry run", it looked "bland".  With some left over strips of card, I used the Floral Background Stencil and Foliage Background Stencil, using the same distress ink colours. I added some pierced edges along each strip slightly in from the edge with this wheel tool thing I have (it's a tool used for sewing I believe), finishing with inked edges. These were added to the card front, criss crossing each other and the flowers and leaves placed on top. Now the layering seemed more cohesive. A few pearl gems and a sentiment were added as my finishing touch. 

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Idea #3: Delight in the inner scent of flowers

I really wanted to showcase the flowers in a different way and in my head pictured them in frames. However when I stamped my idea out, it looked naff and I went back to the drawing board. I always wanted a script effect background for the flowers and rather than green, chose blue.

 I decided the flowers needed to be blue too but when I started layering up all the images, it was too much blue - that's weird coming from me as blue is my normal "go to" when trying new designs! To add a contrast, I added a few yellow & orange smaller flowers. I have also used a mix of hand colouring and the Inner Scents of Flowers Layering Stencil to colour all my stamped images.

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Idea #4: Delight in the inner scents of flowers

I took inspiration for this card from my first card idea of having a raised corner element. The background has been made using a mix of the foliage stamps and then coloured with the Foliage Background Stencil - again with distress inks. I added the corner with 3D foam pads but it looked "detached" from the background, so stamped, cut & coloured some smaller flowers adding these to the design. Some have been raised and others stuck to the background. I did use the Inner Scents of Flowers Layering Stencil to colour the flowers. The finishing touch was a scattering of pearls.

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Why the handcrafted approach?

Now, while Natalie's collection includes instructions/QR codes to tutorials for using with a Scan & Cut, I wanted to show you that you can absolutely create beautiful cards with these stamps and stencils even if you don't have one. I'm working with a very early model scan and cut and to be honest, I am not very competent with it - so all my cards are made by hand. 

The stamped images are easy to cut out with scissors due to their rounded design. Natalie has also added registration marks to the stamp set for those crafters who wish to use their scan and cut instead. I just avoided inking these when making my cards.

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Have you had a chance to work with Natalie's collection yet? I'd love to see what you've created! Share your ideas, and links in the comments below so I can come visit you to see how you used the designs - do love when we all can inspire each other. If you're feeling inspired, you can find the 'Inner Scents of Flowers' collection here: Go Create Craft

A huge thank you for stopping by my blog today and I hope my post inspires you to check out Natalie's collection.

Until next time, take care,

Lou
xxx

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