Power Poppy February Blog Hop!

Well, we hope you’ve had as much fun as the Bloom Brigade has had this past week in the February  Storm of Creativity Release at Power Poppy.  We’ve shown you some fabulous and creative sets that I think are all special and unique and beautifully designed - all to help you create beautiful things.  All five of these wonderful new sets are now available to purchase!  

Today we’re winding up the celebration with an awesome Blog Hop, and I have two designs to show to you.  

The first design is with the new Potted Primroses set that I love so much.  

One of the really fun things Marcy designed in this set was based on a very fascinating concept in Gardening Societies in the UK that developed over time.  It’s that of Auricula Theatres - a special way of displaying these prized plants on shelves;  it was very popular in the 1700’s and is again enjoying a new resurgence.  

This is what The Telegraph from the UK said about them.  "The Plants are formally displayed on shelves in rows in theatres, with pretty scalloped roofs to protect from their two bugbears: the rain in winter and sunlight in summer. Fans of the auricula can paint and convert old shelving units, garden arbours and door-less cupboards to show off their charms.”  

With all of that fun background, I just had to design an Auricula Theatre with stamps and paper.  I coloured up the image with Copics in shades to match this older MME paper I found.  I love the cheerful yellow, orange, teal and green colours in it.  I created a window in my theatre with a Spellbinder’s die, and then created a scalloped awning overtop, just like in the real theatres to hang over the pretty little plants for protection.  

Here’s an Auricula Theatre example in real life (source), how fun, right?  

Here you can see the little details including the seambinding, buttons and twine to finish it off.   Below are the Copics I used.  

Now for my second design I took a totally different direction!  It’s Mixed-media, yet still Clean and Simple.  

I showcased the fabulous Big Scripts set with a lot of fun inky techniques.  The sentiment is embossed in white onto watercolour paper.  Then I watercoloured the paper with shades of deep blue, teal and grey re-inkers, adding salt to the paper when it was still quite damp to get a salted effect (the salt lifts off some of the colour of the ink and gives it a neat effect).  Then I stencilled on some more ink using a Tim Holtz Burlap stencil,  and finally with the stencil on I spritzed the paper with Mr. Huey’s Spritz (Shine).  My fingers were pretty blue when I was done, but it was so fun to play. 

I’ve added a simple die cut heart, as well as sequins onto the design placing it all on a lightly watercolour washed cardstock background.  Very fun and I think it really suits the style of this set.  

Now these fabulous girls in the Bloom Brigade have so much more to show off to you today....

Allison Cope
Christine Okken (you are here)
Cindy Lawrence
Dawn Burnworth
Julie Koerber
Katie Sims
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker
and the final stop is our beloved creator herself Marcella!

Thanks so much for sharing this week with us!