A Mound of Petals

For today, we've got a mound of orange flowers sitting on an orange flower background.

1. Use a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2" piece of Certainly Celery cardstock for your background.

2. On a piece of 4 1/4 x 5 1/2" Tangerine Tango cardstock, stamp repeated flowers all over the cardstock with Tangerine Tango ink. This tone on tone look gives you a nice solid garden look.

3. Cut around the flower edges.

4. With the Trio Flower punch (#109183) from the 2009 SU! catalog, punch about 36 flowers. Since this punch is no longer available, if you don't already have it, you could use the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch(#118309). This punch has 3 shapes on it, one of which is a bitty scallop circle. It is very close to the same size as the trio flower. It will probably give you a slightly different look, but I think that it would still work fine.

5. Punch 2 flowers with the 5 petal flower punch (119880). This punch is designed for flowers but I've always thought it made great leaves. This punch is retired also but SU! has a punch called Blossom Petals Builder(#121808). It has several shapes on it that would be good for leaves also.

6. Place the leaves on top of the Tangerine Tango images that you stamped. You will want them to be a bit to the right of center.

7. Place 2 Stampin' Dimensionals(#104430) on each leaf. They do not have to be center. With a little experimenting, I found that 2 works a lot better than just one for the dimension that you want for this project. 

8. Using the end of an embroidery hook and a soft  mouse pad, push into the center of each petal. You want to give the petals some curve to make them somewhat concave in shape. There may be tools especially made for this purpose, but I've found my embroidery hook works just as well.

9. Doing the petals one at a time, place 2 or 3 petals on each of the dimensionals that you placed on the leaf. With the other petals, place a dot of liquid or school glue on the back of each petal, still working one at a time. Place the petal around the petals that you've already put on the dimensionals. You will want to overlap these and even place some on top of others until you have the look you want. I have some tweezers that I've had for years that I just love to use for working with small pieces.

10. Allow the petals about a 1/2 hour for the glue to dry before you continue.

11. Cut 2 pieces of 3/8" Gumball Green Satin Stitched Ribbon(#126848), one piece about 4 1/2" and the other piece about 6." Apply adhesive to the back of the ribbons and place them on the right and top of the card, overlapping at the corner.

12. Stamp a greeting from Teeny Tiny wishes stamp st(#115370) in Gumball Green ink onto white cardstock.

13. Punch it out with the Word Window punch(#119857). Ink the edges with Gumball Green ink.

14. Punch out a Modern Label punch(#119849) from Certainly Celery cardstock. Ink the edges wotj Gumball Green ink.

15. Adhere the greeting on top of the Modern Label punch.

16. Punch a hole at each end with your 3/16" circle punch.

17.Add a brad from the Everyday Enchantment Brad set (#126126) that was in the 2012 Sale-a-Bration catalog. If you don't have those, SU! has some fabulous new brads available this year in patterns. I just love, love, love patterned brads!

18. Attach this onto you Whisper White card base and you are ready to give it away!

Roses and Doilies

I do like it when I can use more than one stamp set on a card. I actually used 3 different stamp sets for this card, Delicate Doilies(#122592), Elements of Style (#120045) and On Your Birthday (#111664, retired).

1. Cut a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2" piece of paper from Summer Smooches DSP(#125409) for the background piece.

2. Stamp 2 different doilies in Raspberry Ripple and Gumball Green In Color ink. Stamp the birthday greeting from Raspberry Ripple ink on Whisper White cardstock.

3. Using Raspberry Ripple and Gumball Green brush tip markers, color the roses and leaves directly onto the stamp. If you've not done this before, check out my tutorial on it here. 

4. Pop out the doilies using the 2 1/2" Circle punch(#120906). Adhere one to the bottom right of the background paper, going slightly off the edge. Adhere the other doily to the top left of the background paper, again going slightly off the edge. Trim the parts that go off the edge.

5. Cut around the edges of the roses that you stamped.

6. To make the roses pop, add SU! Stampin' Dimensionals (#104430) to the back of the image. For larger images like this, I like to use up my edges that are left on my dimensionals sheet. Just snip the length that you need from the edge and apply in the same way you do regular dimensionals.

7. Cut the greeting out with the Large Oval punch (#119855) and ink the edges with Raspberry Ripple In Color ink. Apply adhesive to the back and place on the bottom left corner below the roses.

8. Cut 2 pieces of Marina Mist 1/2" Scallop Dot ribbon(#122986) each about 6" long. Apply adhesive to the back of one piece and place it on the card front over the lower doily.

9. Tie the other piece in a bow. Using glue dots (#103683), put 3 on the back of the bow. Press it down over the other ribbon at the top right of the card.

10. Adhere the card front to the card base and add a greeting to the inside of your card.

Blue sympathy Floral

Marina Mist cardstock cut to 4 x 5"
Whisper White cardstock cut to 5 1/2 x 8"
Simply Scored Scoring Tool (#122334)
Simply Scored Diagonal Plate (#125586)
Fabulous florets stamp set (#123027)
5/8" Whisper White Satin ribbon (#114616)
Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp set (#127802)
Always Artichoke classic ink
Midnight Muse In Color ink
Word Window punch (#119857)
Modern Label punch (#119849)
Brights Brads (#119740)
Midnight Muse cardstock

Happy 4th of July

On this July 4th, please remember all of the brave men and women who have sacrificed for us to have a free country. This includes all of those from 1776 to 2012. Not only have many given the ultimate sacrifice of their lives but many more have given time away from their loved ones. Many have missed seeing babies born, children graduate and many special events that most parents just take for granted. When a man or woman is in the military serving our country, they can't just take time off to go see their child be born or celebrate an important birthday or event. Especially, when they are deployed somewhere overseas, they have to miss many family times. This also means that the families are sacrificing for our nation's freedom. The children who miss their mommy or daddy because they are serving overseas are making sacrifices also. The spouces who go to bed by themselves at night time are making sacrifices.

I know. I've watched family members make these sacrifices and I am proud of each and every one of them. From my daughter and my grandchildren who lovingly and somewhat willingly give my son-in-law up so he can be a career Army chaplain to my grandson who spent 4 years in the Air Force. I also have another grandson who will be going to basic training for the Marines in just a few weeks. I love them all and I am very proud of what they are willing to do for our country. Next time you see a person in uniform, take a minute to say "thank you for your service." They really do need to hear it!

All of us in the USA can be proud to be an American!

Fixing Mistakes

It is so easy to make a mistake, a goof, a mess when you are paper crafting. If you're working with digital, all you do is hit the Undo button and start over. With paper crafting, there isn't an Undo button. But there are as many ways to fix a mistake as there are mistakes that you might make. Now, how would I know anything about fixing mistakes? Ha Ha!! It's obvious! It's because I'm human just like you and I make plenty of mistakes. I just don't show them to you!

Here are a couple of ideas that might help you in the future.

Have you ever stamped your image on cardstock that you've already used pieces of? You want your paper to go as far as possible so you try to get the most of every little piece. So I stamped a doily on cardstock that I had already stamped several images on and cut them out. When I went to punch it out with my circle punch, I was too close to where I had already cut out other images.

You can see that this isn't quite a circle. One part has a straight line and another part has a niche cut out of it. This could really make the whole card look bad. I don't want to go back and cut close to the actual image and I don't want to start over or throw this piece away. The fix is to place one part sticking off the card so that you will trim this off. You place another image or ribbon overlapping the other part. No one can see the mistakes and they won't know unless you tell them!

Now, I made this card several weeks ago and had it leaning against my embellishment drawers in my craft room. While we do have a/c in our house, this is the hottest room of the house. I had several days when I had other things I HAD to do and didn't get in to do any crafting. I assume that the adhesive melted slightly because the whole center piece had slid on top of the ribbon. It was much worse than in this picture but I tried to fix it before I took the picture. It seems logical to me that the green scalloped square would have been in the middle but the butterfly had wings trimmed off where they stuck out over the edge of the card. Any way, even though I've got it bad where it must have been, the whole card now looks lop-sided. I really don't like all the empty red space. There are times that empty space looks good and has a purpose but this just doesn't seem to be one of them.

So what am going to do? Add more ribbon! By adding another piece of the stitched ribbon to the left side of the card, it looks like it was planned that way.

There are so many things you can do to fix a mistake. All you have to do is use your imagination!

I Don't Do Pink Pink

I don't do pink very often but I thought I'd give it a try so here is what I came up with. I used lots of tools on this. I do love tools!

Word Window punch #119857
Teeny Tiny wishes stamp set #115370
Melon Mambo 1/2" Polka Dot Grosgrain ribbon #125409
Scallop Edge Border punch #119882
1 3/4" Circle Scallop punch #119854
1 1/4" Circle punch #119860
Summer Smooches DSP #125409
Printed Petals stamp set #120444
Primrose Petals In Color ink
Wild Wasibi classic ink
Adornments In Color Dahlia Assortment #127556
Stampin' Diminsionals #104430
Glue Dots #103683

Sunday Share

My friend, Cheri's dad, Bob Jones is in a better place now. We know that he is in heaven with our Lord. Be praying for Cheri, her mom, Milie, and her aunt, Marian. They are wonderful ladies of faith but I know this is still a difficult time.