Trying Gesso

I know nothing about Gesso but Team Awesome Pants twisted my arm and I joined her tracker.  The tracker is, "I Guess so...What Do You Think?" and my card is "Bloom."  I stole this idea entirely from Pinterest.

I cut my cards to size and tore some paper from a dictionary and glued it to two corners of the card using gesso on a sponge brush.  Then I covered the card with gesso, laid a stencil on, and put more gesso on top of the stencil.  You can't really see the text paper and I think I applied too much gesso in these spots.

While that was drying I carved my iris flower stamp.  Once the background was dry I painted it using watercolors.  I knew that my iris would be purple so I consulted the great and powerful color wheel to choose the perfect background color.  Green is opposite of purple so I used that but didn't want the whole background to be green.  That is why it faded to blue at the top.  I love how the one on Pinterest has so much yellow.  So I added some too.

I Guess so...What Do You Think?: Bloom

Then I painted my iris with watercolor paints.  While they were drying I stamped a text stamp on the background and printed/cut my "Bloom where you are planted text."  I put the whole thing together and I feel like it is missing something but I am not sure what.  I thought about adding a ribbon but was scared to do so and didn't want to hide the raised gesso.  I am not sure if I will use this technique again.