CAS79: Three Wishes

I made this birthday card for this week's CAS79 Challenge: Gardens. Easy. Sure, I say that now when I own quite a few floral images but if you had asked me to make a nature-inspired card last year, I would've just laughed and said, "No such luck!" Birds and flowers are two things that have grown on me since I started blogging and selling my cards. Hmm, what new things am I going to try next? ;)

For this card, I used a couple of images from the last two Unity KOTMs that hadn't seen ink yet. Correction, the floral image (which reminds me of dandelion explosions) from the June kit was barely used for yesterday's pair of cards. When I realized how beautiful this image was, I knew I had to showcase it somehow and there was no better way than to frame it with this stunning lace frame from the July kit. In real life, it looks like the flowers are popping right out of the frame but it's all one-layer! I created a mask for the frame which I've file away for future use and stamped the flowers inside.

Originally I was going to place the sentiment in the centre but it didn't look right since it covered up too much of the flower stems and lace border. I decided to place it off to the right, seeing as I seem to love cards with all my embellishments to the right these days! To balance everything, I stamped two other 'wishes' in the top left in Crumb Cake ink (eeek, I finally have it!) to match the sentiment base. So there you have it: three wishes, three flowers, and three gemstones. I may have gotten a little carried away on the sponging. I sponged the centres of the flowers and then regretted it. They seemed to pop more when they were just one shade of pink. What do you think?

Sources: SU Naturals Ivory & Kraft cardstock; AC textured black cardstock; Unity June 2010 Kit of the Month - Fly Free; Unity July 2010 Kit of the Month - Happily Ever After; Memento Tuxedo Black ink; SU Pink Passion, Taken With Teal, Crumb Cake & Pink Pirouette inks; Forever in Time pop-dots; Forever in Time gemstone stickers