Gentle Lilacs

Morning all!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend - I'm certainly looking forward to the lighter evenings now the clocks have changed!

I'm back today with a rather vintage card project.

Well, vintage for me that is!

The BotaniCuts Lilacs from The Greetery proved very popular and have just arrived back in store.

So the perfect opportunity for me to give this set its first outing.

I have to say, I find The Greetery intro videos very helpful for getting to grips with BotaniCuts dies in particular, and I basically used the Distress Oxide colours from Betsy's how-to video to colour in my lilacs with sponge daubers.

Then it was just a case of pulling together supplies for the rest of my card.

I wanted to layer up some patterned papers in my stash, and found a great piece of ledger paper that I cut with the medium Crimped Frame die as the backdrop to the lilacs.

I didn't have anything "lilac" friendly to hand in my paper stash, so I cut the large Deco Frame die from Ivory cardstock and simply added a wash of purple using Milled Lavender and Wilted Violet regular Distress Inks, and aged up the panel with splatters of Wilted Violet ink and Black Soot. Likewise, I also added a bit of gold paint splatter to the ledger die-cut.

I had some dramatic black and white striped paper that would provide the perfect border to this card, and once attached to my card base, I added more gold paint around the outer edge of my card. It really is lovely when it catches the light.

Once the lilacs were in place on my assembled card, I grabbed the Sign Off Sentiments set and matching dies to add a simple sentiment.

I have been using this set a lot of late - I just love the combination of clean fonts and how the dies cut around the full sentiment.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Betsy comes out with more sentiment sets in this style, because boy are they easy to add and just bring something different to my card projects.

As a finishing touch, I added the rest of the leaves and off-white blooms I'd created - and what vintage card would be complete without a button and twine bow?

I'm really pleased with how those lilacs turned out. They really are quick to put together, and once you've done your first one you'll be away!

Until next time, happy crafting!