CROCUS Judith Maslen TRACE. With mauve ink trace the flower-border and the greeting. Use white pencil to trace the two oblong frames around the flowers and the large frame around the outside of the design SHALLOW-PERFORATE with the semi-circle tool. Keep the parchment attached over the pattern and work the flowers in blendable pencil. You will need light and dark mauve, light and dark green and orange. Stage one Use light mauve to colour the whole flower and smooth out with blending medium. Do the same with light green on the leaves. Stage two. Make sure all your pencils are very sharp. With dark mauve, using small strokes, fill in the darker areas at the tip and the bottom of each petal.. Very lightly use the dark mauve to accentuate the edges of the petals. Now with your lighter mauve, work between the two patches of dark colour with fine strokes, working into the dark areas which will blend them together. Take your dark mauve again and accentuate the dark areas at the base of each petal, or where one petal overlays another. With dark green pencil, outline the leaves and add the shadows. Continue with the lighter green, blending into the dark areas. Turn the parchment and stipple the stamens, then turn the parchment to work on the front and rub the side of the orange pencil over the stippling. EMBOSSING. Turn the parchment to work on the reverse and with a small tool, emboss all the pencilled lines. With a medium tool emboss the petals in the mauve border, but NOT the flower centres.. Use a star or sun tool inside the perforations. Use a very large ball tool to gently emboss the lighter areas of the flowers. Turn the parchment to work on the front. RE-PERFORATE with the semi-circle tool. GRID. Place the parchment on a bold straight grid and perforate, following the pattern on the second page. Remove from grid and use a very small tool to emboss inside each four-needle perforation. FINISH by adding stick-on jewels to the flower centres around the border. Work around the outside of the design with a two-needle tool and snip the perforations to release the design from the parchment. Attach to a mauve card with decorative brads, trim this card and stick to a folded white card with double-sided tape. Copyright Judith Maslen 2014