Thank You Card

This is a Thank You card for a special friend. They invited us away on vacation for a week and we took them up on their offer. It was a wonderfully relaxing time.

The stamps and ink are from Close To My Heart (CTMH), the flowers arePrima, with Stickles for the centers. For the "thank you" I stamped it in green ink and decided it wasn't popping enough, so I went over it in orange with a gel pen from Sakura. That was the perfect touch.

Random Floral Blank Cards

Here is a card I created initially for Mother's Day, but decided that it would be great for an All-Occasion blank card. Once I settled on the design, it was super easy to produce a bunch of these in an hour.
It was really great because I was also able to use up a bunch of paper that I REALLY didn't like.

I had bought a big paper stack several years ago because it was on clearance and I quickly discovered that I did not care for the printed papers in the slightest. Thankfully, I only paid about $4 for a 250 sheet stack. The large white flower was from the George Cartridge that was run through the Cuttlebug machine and embossed with the Swiss Dots folder. The center flower is a Prima with a Skittle center.

I used another Martha Stewart border punch for the lacey trim. I love those punches.

Finished Flower Swap!

The flowers for the Flower Swap are finished!

I've given you a flower by flower post, so now I thought you might like to see them all together. As I stated before, I am participating in three different swaps, but thankfully they all go to the same hostess.
Here are the Pinwheel (aka Accordian) Flowers:

Here are the embellished Primas:

Here are the Floral Vines:

Which go with the shades of pink flowers:

Packaged and ready to go

I hope you enjoyed them!

Playing with More Flowers

I promised a follow-up post from the Floral Vines from yesterday.
I felt like I needed more in my flower swap than just the vines I made, so I found some inspiration online. Unfortunately, I didn't have the Cricut cartridge I needed - Mother's Day Bouquet. :(
Necessity is the mother of invention though, so I pulled out my Gypsy and started searching for an appropriate flower. I was out of luck there as well. So I decided to just see what I could do with two of the flowers on the Gypsy Wanderings cartridge.

Not too shabby right? I tried several techniques that just weren't what I wanted or took too long before I decided to wing it and figure it out as I went. These look NOTHING like my inspiration.
This picture shows the before and after of the flower. On the bottom row is the cut from the Gypsy Wanderings cartridge. The flowers were cut at 2", 1.75", and 1.5" My initial plan was to layer them butI was thrilled with how they turned out. I will attempt to explain how I created these flowers, but if you get lost I don't blame you. It is easier to show you what I did, but I don't do videos. Sorry.


First: I folded each flower at the point between each petal. Second: Using that fold as a starting point, I folded one petal slightly over the next petal and finger crimped to the center. I did this between each petal.
Third: carefully, because it is a bugger, cup the flower so the new folds fold correctly.
Fourth: add a generous dollop of tacky glue and a Skittle to the center.

I made a lot:

Fifth: Using a Martha Stewart vine border punch, create several lengths of vines. Sixth: cut the vines into 2-3" lengths.

Seven: Using the Tacky glue again, attach the vine pieces to the back of each flower. Here are all of the drying:
And finished:

This is the set that each swap participant will receive: A close-up:
And the whole pile!
These were a lot of fun to make. They are very different from the other flowers I created. Tomorrow I will post pictures of each set for the flower swap.

Border Flowers

I'm still working on more flowers for the flower swap in which I'm participating.
This time I wanted something a little different.

So what can you do with this:

tacky glue
Martha Stewart border punch
Liquid Glass
little Prima flowers

First: Start by using the Martha Stewart border punch to create this lovely border


Second: Trim away portion of the border, as you like, to create a floral vine


Third: Using the larger of the little Prima flowers, adhere to the punch on top of the flowers already there


Repeat with alternating colors


Fourth: using the smaller of the little Prima flowers, adhere them by layering them, again alternating colors


Finish by adhering small rhinestones to the centers


All five finished floral vines:

You can also use Stickles or Skittles or any other bling of your choice.

Since there were 6 flowers on each vine, this was going to be my third submission for the swap, but it just wasn't enough. Come back tomorrow to see what I made to go with this vine, and soon I'll post a picture of each finished flower set for the swap.