Mother’s Day

A bit late in the day (at least in my time zone!) but here’s a card post for you. This shares some features with the other mother’s day themed card I posted recently. I used the same stamp set and the same purple ink. The stamp set is the only mother’s day themed one I have though, so I think that’s excusable. As for the ink, well… I really like purple!

As I said, this is a mother’s day theme card as prescribed by Cute Card Thursday. I was also going for a Spring(ish) theme for the Crafty Sentiments Designs challenge. Flowers are a big part of spring, at least in my mind, so hopefully the use of flowers on this card are Spring-like enough even if the colours aren’t the most Spring-like.

I based the layout on the sketch provided by the current challenge over at Freshly Made Sketches. I felt like this sketch allowed a lot of freedom which I really enjoyed.

I initially planned to tie-in a fourth challenge when making this card. It was a colour challenge, but when I was deciding what to make I decided the colours wouldn’t work. I may make something else for that challenge in the next couple of days.

I knew I wanted to use my mother’s day themed stamp set (Altenew’s Wild Hibiscus). In fact I very quickly decided that I wanted to try and make a bouquet of sorts with the flowers, making them the focal point of the card. I played around with the different stamps in the set on my graph paper until I found a layout I liked.

Next I cut the panel for the centre of the card, and began stamping. I did the green of the front flower first, covering the petals so that they wouldn’t get ink on them. I stamped off several times on scrap paper to make sure the green was all gone before then stamping the flower itself (this time covering the leaf and stem so they wouldn’t turn purple.) I had to be careful with lining up, of course.

Then I needed to stamp the second flower. I didn’t want the stem to overlap, so I created a mask by stamping the leaf onto a post-it note, cutting it out exactly, then using it to cover the leaf on the card. Then when I stamped the stem of the second flower, the leaf area was masked off. I removed the mask when the stamping was done, and actually put it with the stamp set so that I can reuse it in future.

With my stamped panel ready I needed to think about the rest of the card. I decided I wanted some sort of pattern to the background of the card. After a quick search through my stash I found some very neutral diagonal patterned card that seemed it would work well.

I decided to use the ribbon for the strip because it wouldn’t hide my stamping. I realised I needed a sentiment at this point too, so I added the mother’s love sentiment so that it would line up nicely with the ribbon. I decided to forego an embellishment because I felt it would have taken away from the flowers, and I wanted them to be the focal point of the card.

I’m really happy with how this card turns out. It’s great to actually be able to see how much I am improving with my card making. Both in terms of designs and execution. That said, there are a couple of things I would change. There are still some slight problems with my stamping, for starters. Also the ribbon looks a bit loose, which it is. I couldn’t use adhesive to stick it at the front because that would have shown through.

If I’d had more time and patience (and not been worried that it would ruin the card…) I probably would have made a faux strip using glue and glitter, that would have come up to the edge of the flower, but left it showing. Hard to describe what I mean… In my head it looks good though! And it would have kind of made the flower serve as an embellishment on the strip.

Love,

Lady Joyful