Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Mother's Day

I made a bunch of Mother's Day cards this year, a couple on commission, which was kind of a new thing for me.  Mother's Day is fun because I love making cards with flowers, butterflies, botanicals and fun patterns, and Mother's Day lends itself well to these things.  So...let's get started!



I love this card!  I based it on a design in a card magazine, turned the card into my own sketch, then back into a different card.  I like the blend of colors, patterns and textures, and the asymmetry of it, as my usual comfort zone tends toward the very symmetrical.

I started by stamping two flowers from Stampin' Up's Wow Flowers set, cut them out and crumpled them up, then flattened out again to give them texture.  I cut out leaves from a green denim paper, and punched some leaves from a darker green patterned paper (K&Co Edamame pad).  The yellow and green scalloped pieces came from the scrap box.  To make the card fit an envelope with the overhanging bits, I cut the card itself a bit narrower than the typical 4.25" width so that the parts that stick out bring it up to 4.25".  All of these were layered onto a panel of white cardstock, which was layered onto a kraft card.  I finished with some plain cream colored twine, a "file tab" with the sentiment (A Muse Stamps) and a butterfly in the upper right (also A Muse).  The file tab was created from a scrap and a corner rounder.

I had a request from a neighbor to make a card similar to this one for his wife for Mother's Day, and he added that she likes red.  This was the result:



I kept the overall pattern, the same flower shapes and the kraft card.  The very cool red background paper is from a Recollections pad.  I added more red in the strip of circles and scalloped piece, as well as the second flower (much redder than pink in real life) and used the same twine as before, turned into faux baker's twine with a sharpie marker!  Because I love the combination of red and aqua/turquoise, I couldn't resist adding the button and butterfly, along with the rhinestones (Martha Stewart) for contrast.  The card was finished with the stamped sentiment (Hampton Art Stamps).

While I was on the red and turquoise kick and playing with the leftover scraps from this card, I made this:


Haven't decided what to do with this card yet, so I left room for a greeting at the bottom right.  I used leftover pieces of the same red papers used in the card above, and layered an aqua blue ribbon on a cream colored ribbon to divide the patterns.  I went to my big box of deconstructed dollar store flowers for two sizes of daisies and stacked them, using a brad to hold them together and attach them to the card, and then covering the brad with a blue button.  A very simple card that makes me smile!

Back to Mother's Day...


This card came from just playing with some more of the K&Co. Edamame papers, that I am seriously in love with.  The colors go so well, and I have picked up some stickers and embellishments that coordinate with them for extra fun.  I went a little nuts with the corner rounder on this card, rounding all the corners of the card and background piece, then layering on a contrasting strip of orange pattern paper with some cream edge for contrast.  Finished with a big butterfly sticker and some letter stickers to spell out "Mom".  A quickie that one of our nearby friends snapped up for her mom.  Hope she liked it!



Another commission, made for a friend of Jan's on request.  All I had to go on was that her friend's mom likes "foofy", lots of florals and shabby chic and that sort of thing, so I went a little more over the top than I usually would.  I went back to the Edamame papers and embellishments.  I started by covering a cream colored card with the gray swirly background paper, and added a miniature doily (Martha Stewart) in the upper right corner.   I added a layer of brown and a scrap of that same orange paper for contrast (gray and orange is a color combo I have recently learned to love!) and added some dimensional stickers and a bit of a border piece.  My favorite additions on this card are the light tan piece, which is actually a piece of the packaging from the stickers, and the piece with the greeting on it, which came about as the result of a boo-boo.  I went to stamp the greeting on the tan piece and the stamp slipped, smearing it.  To cover it up I made another homemade "file tab" with my corner rounder.  The piece I grabbed to make it from happened to be the white strip at the top of the patterned paper that holds it into the paper pad, and the indentations along the top are from where it attached to the spine of the pad.  But I decided I liked the texture of it and decided to use it, and I love how it turned out!  Sometimes the best bits are from happy accidents like this.  I of course gathered up the rest of the paper edge strips and put them in my scrap box for future use!



Finally, the card I made for my own mom.  Yes, more Edamame papers.  I went neutral with this card, making a kraft card and layering tan and white patterned paper onto it, which I stamped with flourishes in brown ink and a pink butterfly.  The medallion was made using my Martha Stewart scoring board.  I have tried to make these without the board with sad results so I was very excited to get the board on sale and be able to make these!  I cut a strip of pink patterned paper and punched the whole edge with the Fiskars Threading Water border punch.  Then I used the scoring board to score every quarter inch and accordian folded the strip.  I brought the ends together and attached them, then pushed down the middle and ended up with a lovely embellishment.  I attached it to the card  and made the tag from a scrap of cream cardstock and finished off with a button for the center of the medallion/flower.  When Mom got it she asked if I had made the card, which I consider high praise!  Thanks Mom!   Glad you liked it!

Whew, so that was my Mother's Day card spree.  More (very soon) as I am still catching up on the blogging, I still have quite a backlog of cards to post here!

Thanks for looking, and have a great day!


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