Oriental Mama

For my second oriental-style card, I started with this red background (another of my wax resist backgrounds shown here) - once again using my Far East stamp set that I got from HOTP. 

I started with the border.  I like the fact that this lantern stamp can be stamped end to end to create a longer border.  Once was too short for what I wanted; twice was too long. So I stamped twice and then cut it back to what I wanted.  I used red (Siren) and gold Smooch ink to color my lanterns and the ribbon holding them.  I also ran a bit of gold smooch along the lower edge (cut and embossed with a Spellbinders die).

The focal is cut and embossed with a die from my Marvelous Squares set (Spellbinders Majestic Elements). I then stamped the flowers twice - a full one on the right, and a partial one on the upper left. Whenever I see flowers like this, I think of light pink cherry blossoms, but I decided they would look okay in red to compliment this card.  I colored the flowers with Smooch and stamped the name (stamp made with my Teresa Collins Stampmaker).  I colored the border of the piece by dabbing my stylus onto my stamp pad and then rubbing it along the edges.  Doing this on my craft sheet made cleanup easy. 

The final step was to stamp the butterflies (from the same stamp set), color them in with smooch, fussy cut the edges, and mount with foam tape under their wings for dimension.