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As much as I adore terrariums and succulents, I have never actually made or put one together.  Unless you count making one on paper (at least I know that kind won’t die on me and my not-so-green thumb)!

I’m still quite attached to the technique of watercolor painting stamped images on a card design and my favorite tool by far has been the waterbrush.  I played around with the Live, Love, Grow stamp set by Stampin’ Up! and put many of my ink pads to good use to color in the the stamped images.  I also did a little bit of masking with post-it notes to create a little bit of depth in my terrarium.

I also got to play with the small stitched rectangle dies by Lawn Fawn thanks to a dear friend, and I really like the subtle effect it leaves on cardstock.  So to begin this card design, I cut out the largest frame from a sheet of watercolor paper using a die cut machine.  You could totally skip this step and cut a piece of paper into a 5″ x 3-3/4″ rectangle.  This will leave a nice border once you adhere it to the front of an A2 size card base.

Stamp the terrarium jar/globe/dome image from the set using a Versafine ink pad.  Then begin stamping some of the plant images inside the container.

I wanted to create a little bit of depth within the container so that it doesn’t look like all of the plants were right next to each other in a neat little row.  I stamped one of the smaller images onto a piece of post-it note and then cut it out with some sharp scissors.  Stamp the same image somewhere in the container, then place the piece of post-it note on top.  Stamp a different image next to the first stamped image but this time overlap it a little bit over the post-it note.  This technique is called masking.

When you remove the post-it note paper, it’ll look like you just did some magic.  Ta-da!  You made a layer!

And as you can see here, I went a little nuts with masking, layering, and stamping succulents.

Now for the fun part – time to color them all in!  This is where I decided to make my stash of ink pads even more useful (beyond just stamping with them): I take one of my acrylic stamp blocks and press part of it directly onto the ink pad to soak up a little bit of the ink.  I’m also paranoid about an ink pad drying up so I immediately close it up, take a deep breath, then commence painting with a waterbrush.

I find using the ink pads as watercolor paint much easier when I want to make a larger batch of cards (read: more than like two cards at a time).  I don’t have to worry about the paint well drying up or whether I’ll get a similar tone/color by the time I get to the tenth card for instance.  Here’s a map of the colors I ended up using on these cards:

Again, I’ve never actually made a terrarium and have very little knowledge of succulents so if my coloring is off I apologize!  🙂

The stamp set comes with sweet sentiments such as “miss you” (*LOVE* the handwritten font in this set by the way!), “live, love, grow”, and “my sweet friend”.  I also used the “happy birthday” sentiment from the “rose wonder” stamp set.

Once the card is dry, attach it to an A2 size greeting card base.

Supplies Used:

– kraft colored A2 size card base (Recollections)
– watercolor paper (Strathmore)
– small stitched rectangle stackables dies (Lawn Fawn)
– live, love, grow clear stamp set #141905 (Stampin’ Up!)
– rose wonder clear stamp set #140967 (Stampin’ Up!)
– mossy meadow (#133645), cucumber crush (#138324), mint macaron (#138326), crumb cake (#126975), smoky slate (#131179), calypso coral (#126983), and pear pizzazz (#131180) ink pads (Stampin’ Up!)
– onyx black Versafine ink pad (Tsukineko)
– waterbrush tool (Recollections)