Mommy's Birthday Card (11/21/2012)

Today is my Mom's birthday.  My Mom is truly an amazing lady - she is generous, kind, smart, supportive, challenging (she always pushes me to be better, yet accepts me as I am!), fun, friendly, and incredibly accepting!  She is the kind of person that all my friends enjoy hanging with, and a lot of my friends do visit my parents without me - my Mom has always been like this and she is an incredible person. 

I always try to do something special just for her, and seeing the stamps at the Heartfelt Creations booth at CKC Seattle was just the ticket!  Mom likes flowers and frilly things, and these stamps and techniques screamed Momma!

I used the Hydrangea/Posy Branch PreCut Set, and made a bursting hydrangea card.  I also learned some 3-D techniques that I applied for the card.  Let's check it out:

I took two classes at CKC Seattle from Heartfelt Creations, and they both used some 3-D techniques to give the flowers dimension.  For this flower, I stamped it out on X-Press Blend It paper four times using Black Tuxedo Memento Ink.  I colored in all the images using Copic markers.  I fussy cut out ONE of them, and used it as my base.  I then used a little flower die and cut out tons of the colored hydrangea flower clusters from the other three colored stamped images.  I cut and cut and cut until I had a pile of cut out flowers.  This was a lot easier than fussy cutting out these little flowers!

Then, the fun began!  I pulled out my NEW Paper Blossoms Tool Kit and Paper Blossoms Molding Mat, and started making dimensional flowers.  I learned at the Heartfelt Creations classes how to do THIS!:

Mainly, all ya gotta do is place your flower (or leaf, or whatever) on your molding mat, and use the appropriate sized stylus and either push or roll your stylus around on the flower.  Depending on the size of the cut out image, and/or the shape of it, you either work on the back of it, or the front (or both!) and use it to give a lot of dimension.  For these flowers, since they are little and are tightly packed, I rolled the stylus across the front of the flowers, and cupped them.  After rolling the stylus over the front, I finished it off by pushing the stylus directly down into the center of the flower, which made it "cup" even tighter around the stylus.

To adhere the flowers, I squirted some Crystal Effects 3-D glue onto my kraft mat, picked up each cupped flower with my tweezers, dipped the flower base into the glue, and placed it where I wanted it.  I repeated this a ton of times until the entire hydrangea was covered in little blossoms.  Then, I stuck a teeny tiny pearl in the center of each flower and let the adhesive dry.  Once it was dry, I applied a thin line of glue on the petal edges, and then dusted the entire hydrangea with iridiscent glitter.  I really like this effect!

To frame the flower, I cut a strip of blue textured cardstock and die cut it with my new Fancy Lattice shape, adhered it down, and then adhered two thin strips of silver glitter paper on each side.  I adhered the hydrangea over the strip.

For the "Happy Birthday" sentiment, I used Lawn Fawn's Grand Greetings and stamped it with a black versamark (pigment) ink, then dusted it with sparkly embossing powder I purchased from the wonderful folks at the Sprinkle & Sparkle booth at CKC Seattle.  I heat-embossed it, and then border punched the paper and matted it with blue cardstock, and adhered it with pop dots.

Guy has been suggesting I also do something to the inside of my cards, and this was one of my first attempts at that.  This is what I did to the inside:

I used the same glitter strips from the front, and framed a sentiment from Lawn Fawn's You've Got Mail set.  I also used a few left over cut out hydrangea blossoms and placed them on the bottom right.

A corner-punch later, the card was finished!

I really hope my Mommy enjoys her card - it was a lot of fun to make, and I can't wait to make 3-D flower cards again!  I like this look :)

Thanks for stopping by, have a magical day!

Chris