Honey Bee Stamps - Bloom Where You Are Planted

I have 2 cards to share today using Honey Bee Stamps Stick with Me and Prickly Sentiments stamp sets.  For the first card I used all four of the tiny succulent images in Stick with Me to create a heart shaped arrangement.  I pulled out my Zig Clean Color real brush markers to water color the images in many different shades of green.  I had stamped the succulents in a light gray ink so as I colored the gray lines softened.  After the watercolors were completely dry,  I used a .05 mm black Copic multi liner to trace over the faint stamped lines giving the look of hand drawn images.  I fussy cut out all the succulents and then adhered with glue dots on to a large die cut heart.

I used a Stardust Glitter pen to add just a bit of sparkle to the succulents.  I stamped the sentiment in a dark green ink.  Lastly I added just a few light blue ink splatters and HBS Clear Iris sequins to finish it off. 

I loved how this card turned out so I decided to try the same watercolor and hand drawn line trick with all the cactus images too.  For both cards I really wasn't too worried about being very detailed or precise with the watercoloring.  I think this is called messy watercoloring - just scribble on little color from the Zigs and blend out with a water brush.  I wanted these designs to be more about the look as a whole than each individual image.  So I gave more attention to varying the shades and tones of the greens to create a little dimension and depth.  

For the Cactus card I used much brighter vibrant shades of green.  I fussy cut out all the images then started adhering each cactus one by one.  I wanted them tightly packed with no gaps to completely cover the bottom half of the card.  I used the HBS cloud stencil from the Outdoor Scene Builder stencil set and some Tumbled glass distress ink to give the top half of the card a nice airy sky above the cactus.  That was the perfect place to stamp the sentiment.