Waltzingmouse Flower Show

Claire came up with a brilliant idea following this month's fabulous new Waltzingmouse Stamps release of continuing the floral theme from this months Blog waltz into a CASE competition http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/flower-show-case-comp-open.html

Me being me, I couldn't choose one card to CASE from the delightful array on offer from the special flower show team, so I decided to combine elements from two designers into one card.

I CASEd Aneta's background and layout and added Kimberley's big flower and glossy leaves:

and after 2 attempts and a recycling bin full of failed scraps,  (all I can say is that the lovely delicate border from Nordic Winter is not a pretty alternative to stitching when stamped in thick black over all the edges of your DP!  One of these days I'll remember to test stamp on something other than the original.....) I came up with this which is perfectly timed for my Mum's birthday tomorrow:

I started with the lovely digi papers Claire released to match the Folk Art Flower sets and printed off an A4 version in 4 colours.  Now this is where I went slightly off-piste with Aneta's card and why my first went in the bin.  I have a symmetry OCD and whilst I didn't spot it on the original, when I placed my pieces on the card I noticed that the sides didn't match - it freaked me out and I just couldn't handle it.  So I printed more (the beauty of digis you never run out!) and this time I added an extra "triangle" to the middle so I could have perfect vertical symmetry and everything became right with the world again (until I screwed it up with thick black yucky lines....)   So for attempt number 3, I took the little stamp from Classic Oval Frames and stamped and embossed it in white where the DP's joined to give me the feel of stitching from Aneta's card - much better than the yucky black!  Here's a close up so you can see how it adds such a pretty soft detail:

I cut a doily from white vellum with my cameo and then set about cutting a couple of different 3D flowers from shades of pink and orange paper again on the cameo - layered up with a brad fixing which is covered with a big blob of stickles.  For the leaves I used the cameo again with the folk art cut files (which are free btw - Claire is just too generous!) and I cut 5 of the largest leaves and stamped and embossed them with shimmer EP (WOW) and then I decided I needed a couple of larger leaves at the top so I resized the cut file a little and cut two and just covered the whole thing with shimmer to match the stamping on the small ones.

I used a banner die (Simon Says Stamps) with kraft card and stamped the Happy Birthday from what is probably my most used stamp set of all time from any company as it's just packed with useful sentiments - the Frame It set stamped in a soft chalky blue to match the background.  Finally finished by stamping MUM on a curve in grey using Wooden Heart Alphabet.

Mum doesn't know what a blog is, she doesn't own a computer, so there is no fear posting it before the day that she'll see it.  I know she's going to love it though as she adores flowers of any variety.

As it's definately on a floral theme, I'm also going to enter it to the current flowers theme over at Let's Craft and Create http://letscreatechallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/challenge-68-flowers.html and the Passion for Flowers challenge over at Allsorts Challenge http://allsortschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/week-203-passion-for-flowers.html