Happy Birthday Christine's Mum

Hello there, today I thought I'd show you the 2nd card I made for Christine. The first one was for her daughter's 14th birthday and this one for her mum's birthday. The design brief was "something with flowers but I'll leave it up to you." The other week I took delivery of a reasonably sized Stampin Up order - well by my standards anyway. As a hobby demonstrator I try to order once a quarter if I can so each parcel is jam packed full of goodies. Amongst my new stash was the Wild about Flowers stamp set. I#d been eying it up for a while and couldn't wait to try it out.

Perfect Plum

Sweet Sugarplum

Garden Green

Wild Wasabi

Whisper White

It's funny because since Wimbledon started I seem to have gravitated towards purple and green, must be a subconscious choice. It certainly wasn't planned, I'm not that organised.

I created my background by stamping off first to get a softer colour. I love cottage gardens and wanted to try and recreate a slightly wild and wooly effect with flowers jostling for position.

Using full strength colours I stamped one of the flower stalks onto white card  along with the flower heads. It really doesn't matter if they they don't align perfectly. I then die cut it out using a die from the Lots of Labels set. To make it stand out more I mounted it onto a slightly larger die cut in Perfect Plum, taken from the same set. Three gems and bugs strategically placed on the card just added a little extra zing. I always try to use an odd number as it has a more pleasing effect on the eye.

Now I don't know about you, but I really struggle to stamp sentiments straight. Sometimes you can get away with stamping on a scrap and either punching or die cutting which is very forgiving. But this time I wanted to stamp directly onto the card; not once but twice! I've worn glasses since I was 4 years old and as I've got older, my eyesight has increasingly got worse; sometimes I struggle to see the letters on the keyboard. And I've always had problems with straight lines! So, out came my trusty stamping press - it really does earn it's keep. With a practice on scrap paper to check alignment first, once I was happy I committed to the card. I think it looks ok, maybe you can see a slight slant? Anyway, a handmade card is made with care and love and may have slight imperfections that as far as I'm concerned, add to the overall effect. In fact there are no mistakes, only happy accidents!