Hugs, Good Vibes, and Citrus Blooms | Angela Simpson
Hey there friends! It's Angela here today, bringing you a card featuring one of my favorite new sets from this month's Pinkfresh Studio release, Citrus Blooms. Now that the holidays have passed, I've been enjoying restocking my stash of everyday cards. If you too, are longing for warmer weather in the middle of winter, I think this card might just cheer you up!

The Citrus Blooms set comes with a stamp, coordinating layering stencil set, and die. To get started on this design, I very lightly stamped all of the Citrus Bloom images in the stamp set, just so that I would have some lines to guide my stenciling. Once that was complete, I left the stamp in my MISTI, then started filling in the color with the stencil set and Pinkfresh inks in Olive, Key Lime, Lemon Whip, Marigold, Candy Violet and Lilac. After letting the piece sit for a while to ensure the ink had fully dried, I returned my cardstock to my MISTI, this time stamping in clear Versamark embossing ink, and coating in fine gold embossing powder.

With my images all colored up and embossed, I used the one-piece Citrus Blooms die to cut them all out in a single pass. I love the convenience of this - no more taking extra time lining up dies around tons of small images! While my die cutting machine was out, I also used the Essentials Diagonal Stripes with Window die to cut two background panels from white cardstock. You don't have to do two, but I like the look of a bit more dimension, so I stacked mine on top of each other and mounted them on my A2 card base. This particular diagonal stripe die does have a window in the middle, but you wouldn't know it because my Citrus Bloom die cuts and large sentiment cover it completely.

Speaking of that sentiment, the Sending Hugs and Good Vibes hot foil plate was perfectly sized to cover the window area of my background panel, and I chose gold foil in order to match the embossed outlines. (If you don't have a hot foiling machine, no worries - you can also use the Hugs and Good Vibes stamp set to achieve a very similar embossed result, and one that coordinates perfectly with your Citrus Bloom images.) Once I fiddled around with the arrangement of the sentiment and blooms, I secured them in place temporarily with Press n Seal, flipped them over, then applied foam tape to the back. This really helped them to pop forward off the background panel, and created some subtle shadows and dimension.

Thank you so much for stopping by to check out my card today. I hope you enjoyed it, and that perhaps it's got you feeling inspired to create a similar design with whatever supplies you have in your stash. Until next time, happy crafting! - Angela