Hi! 

Today I am popping in with a quick card I made for the August challenge, with the new Sweet Friend Floral set. The only thing I didn't use from the range was the hot foil plate. 

For colours, I used the palette from the August challenge and decided to use ALL of them, no matter what, as well as incorporating the theme of stripes. Piece of cake, right?

First things first, I used the Sweet Friend Floral layering stencils to create the flowers. The lavender looking flowers are done with Royal Kiss, just different intensity, and the stem and leaves are done with Olive. I have a little ink blending hack when I want soft coverage. Dab your ink blending tool of choice, I'm partial to Life Changing Blender Brushes myself, and then tap it on the inside of the lid of your ink pad. I feel like this give me a better coverage of ink on my brush, plus when I want to use the same colour, but still want to layer it up, this is a great way to do that. For the first layer of purple, I went to the lid rather than the ink pad, and it looks like I have used two different colours, doesn't it? 

The other flowers are done with Ballet Slipper and a light touch of Candy Apple, plus Marigold for the middle parts. I loved how they turned out, so I didn't use the outline stamps on these, before cutting them out with the coordinating diecut. 

At first I wanted to use a stripy cover plate to make my background, but that changed when I saw the Horizontal Stripes stencil in my stash. If I had had the Color Block: Gradiating Stripes Die, I would have used that, though. I love the look of the different sized stripes in that die. With the help of a little bit of washi tape, as I'm all out of Pixie Spray, I ink blended all five of the colours onto a panel. Yep, all five, and even with the contrasting colours, the blend works! 

I stamped a sentiment from the Sweet Friend Florals stamp set with black ink onto a strip of white card stock. It says ´it's been too long, sweet friend´ which is a very useful sentiment right now. Before adding this strip to the card, I tucked the flowers behind it and managed to resist the need to add bling. 

That's it from me for today, but I hope you are inspired enough to make your own card with the challenge as inspiration. Don't forget that you can win $50 by entering your projects over on the challenge blog!

Happy crafting from Erica