Spring is King - by Claudia

Hi, servus and thanks so much for stopping by!

I hope by now Spring has finally arrived over at your places too! It really has been a long, long and cold winter (though over here in Vienna it hasn't been snowing as much and long as in other places, but still much more and longer than usual) and everyone has already been longing to see the first greens and Spring flowers to finally pop from the ground. So when I saw this new lovely ATC blank with the "Field of Tulips Frame" from the awesome range of Calico Craft Parts' ATC Wood Blanks I simply had to create a little Welcome Spring ATC with it.

So starring in today's project there's just one Calico Craft Part, which is the 

Plain ATC Wood Plank with Field of Tulips Frame

and as you can see it already comes with all the lovely linework needed to simply paint your tulips the way you like them.

I went for a deep red as I found a matching designer paper that I wanted to use for the background. 

I used matte DecoArt Decou-Page to glue the designer paper to the ATC's back panel. Then - as always - I drybrushed white DecoArt media Gesso to the frame before I painted the tulips' blossoms, leaves and stems using DecoArt media fluid acrylics (Quinacridone Red, Naphtol Red Light, Green Gold, Viridian and Cobalt Teal Hue). I also mixed some more greens and reds on my palette.

To add a bit of interest to the frame I stamped it with very small text using dark green archival stamping ink.

Red stamping ink was used to add the quote. That was framed with dark green again, using a circle stamp (from my huge collection of circle stamps...you can never have too many circle stamps, can you?)

I finished my ATC off with some doodling with a white gel pen and adding DecoArt media Liquid Glass to the tulips' blossoms (for a bit of shiny bling and dimension). I you use Liquid Glass be patient and best leave it to dry over night. If you touch it too soon (to check if it has already cured), you will leave nasty fingerprints and dull the shiny surface.

I really love how this turned out! 

I hope you like my little Spring Welcome as much as I do. Check out all the fab Spring ATC wood blanks from the wide Calico Craft Parts range - there's one for (almost) every occasion!

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia

xxx