Gallery Blooms – Seasons Around the World on Wednesday
Gallery Blooms Bundle … new product in the 2025-2026 Annual Catalogue from Stampin’ Up!®
Welcome once again to Around the World on Wednesday Blog Hop, travelling around the world through every time zone. You may be starting your trip Around the World here or you may have come from the blog of amazing artist Rochelle Laird-Smith. Always excited to see what Rochelle has created.
Around the World on Wednesday Blog Hop is the brainchild of Angie McKenzie, a wonderful friend and amazing paper artist. My name is Cheryll Miller, and I am so delighted to be a part of this varied and talented group of Stampin’ Up!® Demonstrators.
Seasons around the world …
This month we are exploring Seasons … our favourite season or the current season in our part of the world. That is such fun when we our hop spans both hemispheres.
In celebration of our 5th year, we are continuing with a series of “team member focus” blog hops where we will be CAS(e)ing an individual team member for that blog hop. Our team member focus this month is ME! It’s a tad difficult to CAS(e) myself, so I have chosen to take my very first AWOW project and change it up using current product. You can see that post here https://senseofwhimsy.com.au/2020/04/08/around-the-world-on-wednesday-blog-hop-all-things-crafty/
Gallery Blooms Bundle …
My plan is to create four cards, one for each season, but let’s see how that goes! I thought I had best do one at a time and add them to the post as I go. I have chosen to use the Gallery Blooms Bundle for each season, with the addition of the Beautiful Motifs Stamp Set, Elements of Text and the Textured Notes Stamp Set.
For each card, I will keep follow the style of the Very Versailles card above, keeping the one layer with a masked and blended block, white emboss resist and then stamping over the top. Let’s see how I went.
Spring …
I have used soft pastel colours for my spring card, along with the large bloom image from Gallery Blooms as a feature. The Queen Anne’s Lace from Gallery Blooms is used for the emboss resist background. The cards are mostly single layer, with the inking and stamping all on the card front directly. **Tip – I worked with the card fully open for the entire process, so that inks and Stampin’ Blends don’t get onto the inside of the card.
Ink colours are Lemon Lolly, Bubble Bath and Soft Seafoam.
The large flower is stamped with Basic Gray ink and coloured with Fresh Freesia, Lemon Lolly and Mossy Meadow Stampin’ Blends.
Summer …
Brighter colours are used for my Summer card along with the cheery daisy like image from Gallery Blooms as the feature. It’s the same process as the Spring card, however I pulled in some leaves from Textured Notes Stamp Set and another text stamp from Elements of Text.
Ink colours are Daffodil Delight, Granny Apple Green and Azure Afternoon.
The flower is stamped with Basic Gray ink and coloured with Flirty Flamingo, Melon Mambo and Daffodil Delight Stampin’ Blends for the flowers, and Granny Apple Green and a little touch of Shaded Spruce Stampin’ Blends for the leaves.
I know … that really doesn’t look like Melon Mambo does it? The colour has changed with the Flirty Flamingo and the green blended ink layer underneath it. Don’t you just love the way colours can surprise you!
Autumn …
Moving into Autumn … we are in the last month of Autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere. Such a delicious month, the heat gives way to cooler months, the leaves change colour … it is one of the most dramatic seasons.
For this card, I used leaves from Notes of Texture for both the feature image and the background image.
I dealt with the sentiment a little differently and added some Gold Twisted Thread …. mainly to cover up an ink splodge and some wonky text. So as is normal, a mistake creates a deviation and another version, not quite the same, but looks good, no?
What happened to Winter?
Poor Winter … I ran out of time for this hop … so sad because I love Winter. Snuggle time … I have two golden retrievers so snuggles are the best when it is cold. I think Winter deserves it’s own blog post, so stay tuned.
Design Tips
* In all four cards, I am masking off an area on the folded card front with scrap paper and removable tape and working mostly within that area.
* So I could stamp the main image without any interference from background images and embossing, I created a mask of the feature images so I could place it before doing anything that might show through the flowers. Complicated? A little, but it is just a matter of working through the steps.
* The bacground images have been white heat embossed first with the feature mask in place over the top and bottom masks. Then remove the feature image mask to ink blend the exposed panel. This creates an emboss resist and once the ink is polished off the top of the embossing, the images pop out from the background.
* Place the feature mask back in place for the next steps. The text images used are from the Elements of Text Stamp Set (an online exclusive), (stamp right over the embossed backbround images, the embossing will resist the ink). And to make those background images pop a little more, I stamped the same image again, slightly offset and right over the top of the embossing. Polish that embossing again with a soft clean cloth or tissue and voila!!!!
* Now we can remove all the masks, and the pretty coloured panel is exposed. The feature images are stamped with Basic Gray and extend beyond the coloured panel. The images are coloured with Stampin’ Blends. **Note: The areas of colouring with no inked colour behind will be a slightly different colour to that where the colouring is over the inked panel. You could adjust it by adding some of the background colour to the image using Stampin’ Blends.
* I replaced both the top and bottom masks and added some splatter to the coloured section using Wink of Stella or Stampin’ Write Markers.
* The sentiments vary depending on the design and how many ink smudges I had to cover. Some are stamped straight onto the card front and some are separate panels.
* As this is a single layer card, so if you are colouring with Stampin’ Blends as I did, they will bleed through to the inside of the card, so I added a panel to the inside front of the card to hide this. And I decorated the inside with another masked and inked panel similar to the outside.
This is the Around the World on Wednesday design team! I am very excited to see everyone’s projects this month and check out how we are all celebrating the seasons around the world … oh and to see everyone’s CAS(e) of my work. 😉
Click through each team member’s blog for loads of inspiration ….
Next up we are are going to take a trip all the way across the ocean to Marga Bultena in Germany… that’s quite a hop … Marga has just recently joined our hop and I am so excited to see what she creates. I am going to grab a cuppa and check out all the projects … and get prepared to be inspired.
Leonie Stuart – AU
Rochelle Laird-Smith – AU
Cheryll Miller – AU
Marga Bultena – NL
Aurélie Fabre – FR
Kelly Taranto – US
Chris Smith – US
Theresa McEntee – US
Lori Willcox – CA
Teri West – US
Cheryl Hamilton – US
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When you have time, I’d love to see Winter! These are gorgeous – so many layers and textures too!
All of your seasonal variations are pure delight. Thanks for being such an inspiration!
Love your three cards Cheryll, I think my fave is Autumn, but all beautiful.
I do remember that first card from way back it’s lovely too.
Beautiful cards!! Love this technique.
All 3 cards are just beautiful!! Love your style – and that Queen Anne’s Lace stamp! I’ll have to get that one. So much fun to CASE you this month!
Thank you so much Cheryl. xx
Such beautiful cards! I love the vibrant colors you chose. I reallly want to see what you would have done for winter!
Thanks Theresa! xxx
Wow times 3! I love the techniques you used, Cheryll! I might have to CASe you again!
Thanks so much Lori! xx