Rainbow Ranunculus Wreath

I recently took the Online Card Class Spring Card Camp Class and was really inspired by the wreath building technique Laura Bassen shared so I thought I'd give it a go.   It's really easy to create a wreath on a square card, with our without a stamping plaform.

I thought the beautiful new Ranunculus layering stamp from Avery Elle was the perfect choice to create a wreath so I selected the largest flower and selected my rainbow of inks - you need 4 colours per flower and I found it easiest to pick my colours and stack them in piles of 4 so I could work down the colours from lightest for the base layer to the darkest for the top layer.   I used Distress Oxides - I won't list the colours as there 34 shades!   Just pick your favourite inks and colours.  I missed green out of my rainbow deliberately so I could used it for the leaves.   If you don't want to do a rainbow, why not pick two sets of colours and alternate as you work around the wreath.

Laura showed the technique using a platform - I rarely use mine as I never have enough space on my desk to get it out and I find I'm slower with it than my blocks, but the principles of creating the wreath are the same whichever method you choose.   Start with a square piece of card and draw a very light pencil line from corner to corner, and then through the middle top to bottom and left and right.   You will then stamp the centre of your flower (or whatever image you want to make a wreath from - a wreath of cupcakes could be fun!)  I stamped my base layers first to get all the flowers in the right place before I did the layers.   Here's my "scrap" version - I dropped the block on the orange so I used it as a practice piece and I've therefore made one of the lines really dark so you can see how I line it up with a block.   I used my Lawn Fawn 3.5 cm block which has a great vertical line as well as 3 horizontal ones.   I popped my stamp where I wanted it without ink, and then lined up the point on the centre line of the block with the centre of the card and made sure the line on the block lined up with the line on the card.  That way, when you pick up the stamp, you can ensure you are stamping at the same distance all the way around the card.  This also makes lining up the layers easy - just repeat the process and it's just as easy as using a platform.  If you want to use a plaform, then just leave the stamp in place and rotate your card.

Once I'd completed the flowers, I cut two masks of the first layer of the flower so I could stamp the leaves in between each flower.  I stamped both layers of one, then moved the mask on the left to the next flower around the wreath and worked my way around until all the leaves were stamped.

I finished with a nice bold sentiment in the centre - this one is from one of the most useful sentiment sets I own - I use it often - Opposites Attract from The Greetery - I love that you can pair the big sentiments with a smaller scripty font to make a double statement.   There are dies to match both the big and scripty fonts as well as foiling dies for the big words.  I popped my card panel onto a larger grey pearl base.

Hope that inspired you to get creative with wreath building - the possibilities are endless!

Happy Crafting! 

Tara