Playing with Poppies

My sweet friend, "sista", little sis Virginia Lu recently went on vacation with her family to Lake Louise.  She shared with me a few pictures that her husband Dr. John took of the beautiful surroundings there, and I thought they were so lovely that I asked her if I could use one of them as an inspiration for a card. Here it is, compliments of Dr. John Lu:

 Are these Iceland Poppies?  Don't know......but they are gorgeous, aren't they?  How many variations of creams and yellows and golds and oranges are there?  So I got to playing this morning, and here was my first attempt.

supplies: white,  Core'dinations guava, Hero Arts Mandarin layering paper, F3045 Elegant Poppy, CL184 Thoughtful Messages, versafine onyx black ink, Memento Hero Hues sunshine markers, cream and green Prismacolor pencils, EK Success diamond scallop border


I used this Hero Arts stamp from 2004 called "Elegant Poppy", and colored it with markers, and colored pencils, and mounted it on Mandarin layering paper.  One of the poppies was stamped a 2nd time and popped above the panel.

Then I thought of this stamp from 2005 called Shaded Glory.....it looks enough like a poppy that I tried that next, against a distress ink sponged background.

supplies: white and cream and DCWV Green #1 card stocks, scattered straw, mustard seed, wild honey, orange marmalade, and shabby shutters distress inks,  F3254 Shaded Glory, CL156 Treasure the Moments, vintage photo distress ink  

And then I tried it using both of the stamps, since one is an outline and the other is a shadow stamp.   I followed the above example, but to finish, I overstamped the elegant poppy flowerhead only in vintage photo over the already stamped shaded glory flowers.

supplies: same as above, but using dark cream parchment as the card base and using CL497 Find Joy set as the sentiment.

It's not perfect, but I think this one is my favorite.  Of course, none of them get anywhere near to the real thing, but I had fun in the process.  I made a conscious  decision not to use any embellishments on these, and just enjoy the stamping process.

Thank you so much, Dr. John, and Virginia, for sharing these with me - it was almost as good as being there! Virginia will be sharing more of these pictures in the upcoming days, so be sure and visit her blog.