Way back in April, demonstrators could pre-order some select items from the new “big” catalog. The Hand-Penned Suite were one of several items that we could order, and I was very happy to add these pretty coordinating products to my crafting stash. I was pretty deep into a quilting phase at the time, so I didn’t play with these stamps until now. I’m totally a sucker for flowers, and I love the images that are available with this bundle. The 2-step fill-in images aren’t perfect for filling in the images, which creates an artistic look and is very forgiving. The great thing about these stamps is that I can create a bouquet with a variety of colors or just one, whatever suits my fancy. I can see myself going to this set a lot for my projects. I also really love the hand-written script font for this greeting, which adds a perfect element. I hope that you’ll give this suite a look, it’s so pretty and perfect for Spring and Summer creations.

This challenge was the inspiration for my color scheme on my card. I don’t have any bee or bird house images, so color and flowers was the way that I had to go. The nice thing about inspiration challenges is that the creations can be quite different because we’re all different. I do love the colors in this picture, and they seemed perfect for the flowers in the Hand-Penned bouquet stamp. I love the country-house feel of these colors together!

The layout for my card was inspired by the latest Global Design Project (GDP) challenge. I immediately thought of the bouquet in the Hand-Penned Petals stamp set to use in place of the hydrangea image in the original. I would have liked something just a little bit larger, but I’m happy with how this turned out.

Oh, oh – I almost forgot! I used my Blending Brushes for the first time to replicate the look on the background of the inspiration card. I am absolutely in love with these things! They create a nice soft blended color and I’m going to use them a lot. I’ll be getting some more so I can have one for each color way.

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