Monochromatic or Colorful?!

Hello!  LeeAnn here and welcome back to the inspiration blog.  Are you a colorful, over the top person or one who prefers clean and simple?  I am typically a lover of CAS and not typically a big floral person, but all deals are off with this Hummingbird!!!  The Trailing Hummingbird stamps, dies and coordinating stencils are AH-Mazing!  I absolutely love hummingbirds anyway, but this stamp set allows many combination possibilities with the diversity of the stamps available.  Did I mention these three items can be purchased as a bundle???

I made two cards initially, but have several more at various stages of completion.  Let's get into the details of these two beauties today!

I started the first card by stamping the hummingbird and then masking him so he appears in the foreground of the final image.  I then stamped the flower over the masked bird and proceeded to add color with the coordinating stencils. 

I'm not great at the coloring process, so the option of stencils and blending is fabulous!  It's so much easier than coloring the individual images and trying to determine where shadows and highlights should appear.  Stencils take the guess work out of the coloring process and produce a beautiful image EVERY time!

I used the following LDRS Hybrid Inks for the stencil blending:  Kiss Me Red, Lipstick Jungle, Pink Tutu, Key Lime Pie, & Four Leaf.  I added some black ink splatters and layered the card panel (trimmed down to 4x5.25) to a rainbow foil card panel before mounting on an A2 card base.  The sentiment is black heat embossed and is from the With Affection Collage stamp set, which is also part of the newest release.

I LOVE the final look of this card even if it's outside my normal design box!  I love the color combinations and the smooth look of ink blending as opposed to coloring with alcohol markers.

The next version of the card is more within my usual design wheel house!  I love the look of tone on tone or monochromatic or clean & simple.  I stamped all of the images with LDRS Watermark Ink and heat embossed in metallic gold. 

I then colored the images using alcohol markers, which isn't as dimensional as utilizing the stencils, in my opinion.  Of course, that's due to my lack of coloring, blending, shadowing skills!

I die cut the images and arranged on a white card panel cut down to 3.75 x 5.00. I layered the card panel on a gold glitter card panel cut to 4.00 x 5.25.  All of this was mounted on an A2 white card base and topped with the same sentiment heat embossed in metallic gold.

Which one is your favorite look?  I struggle to design outside my normal and stamp sets like these tend to push my creativity to new levels.  There are so many fun new products in this latest release.  Be sure to check them all out!!!  I can't wait to see what you create!

Crafty hugs, LeeAnn