Aqua and White Flowers

Today I have designed a card using some older products from Joan's Gardens but also some of the new Marianne Design dies that she posted to her blog today.   I have taken pictures to help you see exactly the products I used and how I created this card.

For the beautiful embossed background, I used the Marianne Design (DS0911) embossing folder.  Since I have a portion of this embossed area covered up with a flower, I took a picture so you can see how beautiful this "Cut and Emboss" folder is.  Marianne Design makes the most beautiful embossing folder and your cards will always look very special when you use these gorgeous folders.

I wanted to make a "funky" flower today with polka dots.  I didn't have any design paper I wanted to use, so I made my own using a piece of the lightweight card stock Joan and I use to create our flowers.   I used this background stamp from the Studio 490 "Seriously Art" stamp set.  I like it because the dots are small and close together creating a very pretty Dotted Swiss design.  I used VersaMark Ink and white embossed them on the aqua card stock.  Since this is a long narrow stamp, it was easy to stamp as many repeat rows as I wanted.  I used a portion of this background to die cut the center flower and also used a strip of it for the side border, to coordinate everything on the card.

The flowers I used are from the new Marianne Design Creatables "XL Flower Set with Leaf" (LR0196) package.  You receive three size petals in it plus a leaf.  On the back of the package it explains how to create these a flower with these petals.  You need to cut them has I show in the bottom row above, then glue the together.  Before gluing them back together, I used the tools from the flower tool kit to condition them, "cupping"  for easy assembly.  I left a tiny piece on one side of the cut out petals to make it easier to glue them back together.  Once you get the flowers shaped and glued back together, you just need to glue (stack) them together.

You know I always like to add stamens to my flowers, so I am showing you the die cut and punched pieces I used.  First, the top row is showing the Cheery Lynn "Miniature Rose" (B152) die and the 3 die cut flowers I used for each flower along the left border of the card.  On the far left you can see the Punch a Bunch "Small Sparkle" used for the stamen.  I only added one to each of the small flowers.  On the bottom row you can see the four  "Medium Sparkle" punched pieces used for the large flower.  In order to make the stamen "frilly" I cut down the center of each "spike" down to the center, then used a small stylus and pressed it down into the black shaping mat to make it curl up. All four pieces were glued together, pressed back down in the shaping mat, and added to the large flower.

Under the large flower I added this beautiful Memory Box "Quinn Flourish" (98267).  I die cut two of these flourishes and cut the pretty little flourishes on the ends off, so I could tuck them under the small flowers on the left border.  They are just the perfect size.

This is a picture of the Marianne "Leaves"  (LR0192) used under the large flower.  I used two of the leaves on the right and only one of the leaves on the left.  I use these leave a lot for a pretty embellishment under my flowers.

On the left side border, I used the new Marianne border dies "Anja Lace" (LR0201).  Don't you love the detail in that pretty border.  Up in the upper right corner, I added one of the Cheery Lynn "Mini Butterflies" (DL 112).  To finish off the card, Kaiser Craft turquoise and white pearls were added.

Don't you love the great variety of products you can purchase from Joan's Gardens!  She makes it so easy to do one stop shopping.  She is always keeping an eye open for the newest products available.  You know if you do see something she doesn't have on her blog, you can just ask, and she will gladly try and get it for you.  I'm sure you probably know also, that Joan charges $1.00 less than retail, on most products, and she charges you exactly what it costs to ship - no minimum shipping charge.  Be sure to go over and check out all the new products she posted today.