Elemental for February

It's the first Friday of the month and time for another in the Daring Cardmakers  new year-long theme of Elemental Inspiration pictures - the idea is to have a really good look at the picture then use at least three elements from it to make a card of your own. 
This time it's Sharon's turn to provide a photo and she's chosen a fabulous doodled page with swirls, flowers and other patterns on a water-coloured background.  There is so much going on in the picture!
My doodling is dire, so I decided to use the doodled shapes as my main inspiration, but use die cuts to echo the doodled shapes

Te make the background I started by using a couple of shade of Versamagic ink pads to colour the card blank.  
Next I found the Memory Box Cosmo Border die and cut it in shades to match those in the original picture - but having moved them around the card for a while I decided I didn't like them in any position (these things happen, don't they hehe),
I did however like the shape of the die and how it echoed the doodled flowers in the photo, so I cut the die in card and used it with various shades of ink as a stencil to add more depth to the background.
At which point I thought the colours were a bit too strong and was about to bin it when I thought a vellum wrap might work instead.  The vellum is slightly smaller than the card, so that there's still a border of the deeper colours.  In the end, the thing I like best about the card is how it looked at that point!
Here's Sharon's inspiration piece

I thought the "spoked wheel" doodle in the middle of the picture would make a cute flower centre so made my own version - with yer actual doodling, don't you know! Though in fact this is the bit I like the least and I think I'll change it for something more subtle
I made a big flower, added lots of swirly green bits and leafy swirls, and then picked out the profiled flower on the left of the photo to make a smaller flower for the corner of my card.

Materials and Tools

Off-square card blank

Lots of inks, mainly Versamagic Dewdrops

Vellum

Paper for flowers Kitchen Spice (Bo Bunny)

2x green Bazzill card, Stickles Crystal Ice glitter glue

Dies: Sunflower quilling dies, large and small, Leaf number 2 (both Crafters Companion)."Curly Swirlies" die (Taylored Expressons)

"Sprigs" Die (D-Lites by Spellbinders) for smaller leaves

The Design Team have made some wonderful cards again this week, and I am really loving how we can all start from the same place but take elements from the pictures to use in our own way on our cards.  It's definitely not as easy as the old monthly colour challenge, but it really makes you look at the pictures carefully and think about how you can develop the ideas into your own style of cardmaking.
Thanks for looking, hope you'll be joining in with us this week