Foamiran Spider Mums

Good Morning.  In the past, I have created many different flowers using Susan's Garden Flower die sets and Foamiran.  Today I have a card I designed using Susan's new Spider Mum, from her Victorian Garden Garden release.  I have to say that this is probably the easiest of all flowers to create with the foamiran.  It does not take a lot of shaping.  Each size of the petals were die cut out of white silk foamiran, which was sent to me by a very sweet friend in the Netherlands. I used all of the petals except the very smallest one.   The petals were colored by sponging on Pink Ink.  The different size layers were glued together seperately then pulled up and twisted pretty tightly to give the petals shape. (I feel you get better shaping by doing this in each different size of petals because you can twist a smaller amount tighter for good shaping.)  Open up and flatten to create that layer.   This foamiran is pretty thin and I did not have to use an iron to shape it. The heat from your hand will shape it.  Once each layer was shaped, they were glued together to create the flower.  I did use a hot glue gun to put the layers together.

In the background for this card, I used an old Anna Griffin die.  It was glued to a pink 5x7 inch card.  

Using Susan's new Victorian Garden Foliage die set, the Ginkgo was die cut out of Susan's Specialty cardstock, colored using OLO markers, and shaped using Susan's Flower Tool Kit.  

Using Susan's Berry Branch die, several branches were die cut from watercolor paper and colored green.  For the berries, I used tiny styrofoam balls, which you can purchase from the craft store or Amazon.  A few were put in a small plastic storage bowl, that I got from the  Dollar Store, ($1.25 for 5 bowls) then purple alcohol ink was squirted in the bowl.  The lid was put on the bowl and it was easy to shake the bowl until the balls were all covered with ink.  I used to put the balls in a zip lock bag, but they were hard to get out so they could be dried.  By using the small bowl, they were very easy to pour out on a piece of wax paper to dry.  Once they were dried, I glued them to the Berry Branch.  I glue berries in one layer on the branch and let the glue dry, then add another layer on top to create clusters.  Once they are dry, I use a fine tip black or brown pen to push down on each berry help make them look realistic.  The branches were cut apart and arranged behind the flowers.

Pearl Embellishments from Spellbinders were added to the card for a finishing touch.