Bitty Botanical Birthdays with Dawn

Hello, friends!  It’s my turn to share a project with you for The Greetery and when I was working on my release assignments from the Bunnies & Bows Collection, I had too much fun playing with the Bitty Botanicals stamps + stencil and die.  Since I had the set out, I went ahead and made today’s project, too.  When the ideas are flowing, I find it best to just roll with it and keep cranking out the projects, if you’ve got a bit of time!  🙂

The main thing I found with this set, is that as soon as you start making those little flowers, you’ll want to make more little flowers.  And then you’ll want to try out more color combos and before you know it, you’ll make a couple sheets of them in all the colors and then need to make multiple cards, which is exactly what happened here!  LOL.

Adding some shading to these is super simple but adds a BIG punch of detail and depth! I used colored pencils here, and I’m telling you, once I got started, I was hooked! It’s pretty relaxing and fun!

PRO TIP: For the larger flowers, draw a little curved line like a smile in the center of the flower (rather than just a dot). Then, take the pencil and draw some softer lines from that smile line, up toward the top of the floor. See the pink flowers on the left to see what I mean. This gives the look of the lower petals curving downward from the center of the flower, and the softer lines going up, look like stamens. That curved line really adds a lot of depth and it’s so simple!!

PRO TIP:  I chose to keep the sentiment super simple because I really wanted to let the background shine, and didn’t want to cover up any more flowers than I absolutely had to.  This sentiment from Arched Sentiments stamp set and matching die worked perfectly!

And of course, here’s the green, blue, purple version….

PRO TIP:  Adding shading to the leaves or stems doesn’t have to be hard or fussy either.  Simply use a darker pencil color than your ink color, and draw over the stems at the base of the plant.  If you focus the darker color at the base, it looks a bit more like the flowers would in nature, since the base of the plants are usually more in shadow, than the tops that are up nearer the light.  And as for the leaves, simply draw a line from the bottom of the leaf, up toward the top, but don’t take the line all the way to the tip.  You’re just giving the feel of a vein in the leaf, so keep it simple and you’ll be good! 

PRO TIP: You can also use the Bitty Botanicals negative die cut, to help you get your placement of the flowers on your card front.  Just pop them back in the negative to adhere to the card and then take away the negative.

Which color palette is your fave? The warms or the cools? What color combo are you excited to try out yourself?

Thanks so much for being here! Grateful for you!

Dawn