Poppies_Thinking of You

This pretty poppy digi stamp was a gift today drawn by Zoe at MakeItCrafty distributed in tribute to Anzac Day in Australia where Poppies for their Veteran's Day are a tradition too.  I used some different techniques to create this card that included masking the poppies and stems with Winsor watercolor Art Masking Fluid, then stenciling the "burlap" over that with Tim Holtz Burlap layering stencil and Tim Holtz  Distress ink (Black Soot). The stamp pad needs to be reinked, so the sponging is very light (which is just what I wanted) but I think spritzing very lightly with either water or alcohol would change the attributes of the sponging and might produce an interesting background on the right paper..  After removing the Masking Fluid, I colored the poppies to be orange-ish like California Poppies with Prismacolor Pencils, finished the centers of the flowers with Wink of Stella Gold, and added a Thinking of You sticker from Pop-Ups-etc.  Since this was the first go at some new ideas, I had printed this on high-quality matte photo paper, which is NOT good for pencils, but worked out okay for this proto-type.  I've found Penciling done best on Stonehenge vellum surface watercolor paper, or do the flowers with Copics on Neenah.  Mattes are  SU Tangelo Twist and Hello Honey.