Life is Beautiful: A Spring Postcard

Spring is in the air and life is beautiful.

Iron Craft day!!! I really enjoyed this week's challenge. The challenge was to make a postcard. That's it. Easy-peasy and oh so fun! I went with a spring theme because the flowers are blooming in my yard and life is indeed beautiful.

Ingredients:

• Blank card & envelope
• Watercolors
• Paintbrush
• Cup of water
• Paper - white, brown
• Glue stick
• Stamps - flower, butterfly
• Inks - brown, pink, green
• Sticker - Life is Beautiful
• Adhesive foam
• Color pencils - brown, orange
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Stylus
• Pen or marker

 Wow, that's a lot of stuff! It didn't seem like that much when I was working on it. Anyway.

Cut the blank card in half at the seam. Put back one side for later. Using your watercolors, paint the background of your card starting with a light blue at the bottom and working your way up to a dark blue at the top. I had to do two coats of the dark blue to get the color I wanted.

Painting the background.

While that's drying, draw a tree-like shape on the brown paper. Keep in mind that the design will be reversed on the finished card. Cut it out very carefully.

They sort of look like branches...if you squint...and tilt your head to the right.

Using a brown pencil, draw some texture on the right side of your tree. The "right" side meaning the side that's facing out on the final card. Hope I didn't lose anyone there.

Barking up the right tree.

On a piece of white paper, make a whole lotta splotches with the watercolors. Bleed them into each other.

Modern art?

Now for the fun part. Randomly stamp a bunch of flowers and a butterfly (or two) over the colorful splotches. The green ones are going to be leaves. Let it dry and cut everything out. I only used three flowers and three green flowers. Cut the green flower petals apart to make the leaves.

Stamped pretties.

Burnish the petal edges and around the centers with a stylus to create dimension. Color in the centers with the orange pencil.

Just an excuse to use my stylus.

Arrange everything before gluing it down. Glue your sticker onto a scrap piece of white paper and attach it to the card with the adhesive foam.

Nearly there.

Now, we've got to worry about the back. And the envelope. Grab that piece of card that you saved back. I stamped it all over in a random pattern using the flower stamp and pink ink. I also took the opportunity to decorate the back of the envelope. I wrote all of my pertinent information on the back and then glued on the second butterfly. After everything is dry, glue the wrong sides of the cards together.

Can't forget the backs.

Aaaaaannnnd, we're done. Finally! I think it was worth it.

Finished!

I wish everyone a fabulous spring and I sincerely hope winter is on its way out for good!