Geranium Card/Inchie

Edit: To find out all about Inchies, visit Ellen's blog post HERE.

Note: Tropical Blondies recipe is now posted with the teacher treats post. Enjoy!

My friend Bev issued a challenge to some friends for the Memorial Weekend. You have to use flowers and there has to be red on the card. I was up for the challenge! I decided to use Karen Lockhart's Geranium stamp..what flower says *RED* more than a geranium? Okay, maybe a rose. Anyway, I decided to do two projects and combine them together as a little gift.

I started out by stamping the Geraniums image twice. When choosing the Copic marker colors that I wanted to use, I got out my color chart and selected colors of red and green that were very close together on the chart. This is the best way to add Copics to your collection...by adding 2-4 similar colors to your collection at a time. This way, you'll be able to blend and shade like a pro.
After I colored two images the same way, I decided that I wanted to use one image for a card and one image for a plant stick with an Inchie Art Square on it. You'll see the finished projects in a little bit. I worked on the Inchie first. When you are working Inchies, sometimes you will use a stamp that is tiny and fits right into the square. But in this instance, I wanted to color the full Geranium image and then cut a 1" square from the full image. To do this, I highly suggest you invest in a 1" square punch. I take a scrap of cardstock, punch a 1" square and use this to find the perfect 1" piece of the stamped image, just like I've done below on the right side. I then punched out my 1" square. Before I adhered my stamped square to the Inchie Art Square, I colored the mat board edges with a red Copic. I think the colored edge just adds a nice touch to the finished piece. I then assembled my Inchie together and added a small scallop Spellbinder's cut square behind the Inchie. Here are my two finished projects. The card uses Cosmo Cricket cardstock which was cut with a large Spellbinder's Scallop Square Die Template. The main colored image was cut by hand with scissors and mounted on top of some Papertrey ribbon and little snippet of cardstock with some notches cut out. And this is a little plant stake that I had left over from my garden supplies this year. I covered the stake with patterned paper to match my card and then adhered the Inchie Art Square and added some ribbon.
I think the little plant stake would look so cute in an actual pot or basket of Geraniums or you could add it to some little plants like I did in the photo above. Give the card along with the plant and you've got a great summer time gift! You can find the plant stakes at any garden center store or Walmart.