Peonies

Hello, friends!  I've been busy spending time with my daughter who is home on spring break since last week so I haven't had much time to create.  But today I had a few minutes in-between laundry to play, so I created a matching set of cards using the Avery Elle stamp set Peonies. For my first card, I used this week's CAS(E) this Sketch Challenge #162 for my layout and kept my card clean & simple for the most part with the focus on my watercolored flowers. Yes most of the time peonies are shades of pinks, but I started pulling out colors and decided I wanted something bolder and went with abandoned coral and festive berries distress ink to watercolor my peonies and twisted citron for the leaves.  I die cut the flowers from the set from watercolor paper, stamped them with black ink and watercolored each of them with distress ink.  I used a Hero Arts stencil for my background and sponged on some cracked pistachio distress ink.  I added my white vertical banner then my sentiment strip and adhered my vase and flowers.  To finish off this card, I tied on some black and white bakers twine and some black rhinestones. For my second card, I repeated some of the same steps as my first card with the stenciling and watercolored flower but used the Avery Elle Happy die cut which I die cut three times from black card stock and glued together.
To those of you who watch Downton Abbey, did you watch the finale last Sunday?  Ugh, it was so good and I'm so sad that it's over.