Flowers

Enjoying The Little Things

| ullycatdesigns

Spring greenery and the mention of fairies, sprits, leprechauns and other wee creatures of mischief and fortune is what this card is about. It uses papers from the Graphic 45’s Little Things collection and dies by Karen Burniston including the new Rectangles and Labels Crosshatch set for creating backgrounds.

The card uses a pre-made 5×7-inch cardbase that decorative papers have been adhered. For the card front a card topper and two layers of decorative papers were used.

On the inside of the card, I covered the cardbase with a green dotted paper (5×7-inch) and then cut the floral papers (6×4.5-inches). I wanted a scalloped edge on the floral paper, but the scalloped rectangle in the die set is slightly smaller than 6×4-inches, so I had to cut the edges in a modified way. I placed one edge under the die and the other over the top of the die to cut. Unfortunately, I messed-up and cut two edges, which meant I had to piece the paper when I adhered it. The edge of the floral paper that abuts the center fold is not scalloped.

Before cutting or assembling the mushroom house, I watched the assembly video for both the Tiny House and Mushroom Roof. I decorated the white house piece first before assembling the house using windows and door from the mushroom set. I had a thin strip of the green dotted paper that I placed as grass edging the bottom of the house. The paper collection has a red dotted mushroom paper that was perfect for the roof.

I wanted the “Happy Birthday” to match as close as possible to the lettering font used on the card front, so I used a PoppyStamp word die, cut twice from blue cardstock scraps and glued together before adhering to the card.

For the pond label, I cut the crosshatch label from the new Rectangle and Labels die set and inked the edges with a dark blue ink. The clover leaf and ferns were fussy cut from the decorative papers.

One of the coordinating papers was used on the card back while a large sentiment was cut from the paper set for the back of the envelope flap.

Thank you for reading this blog post. I hope it gave you inspiration and a smile. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • Graphic 45 – 12×12 Double-Sided Papers – Little Things Collection
  • Blue, Brown and Yellow Cardstock Scraps
  • Park Lane – A7 White Card and Envelope

Ink

  • Ranger – Tim Holtz Distress Ink – Prize Ribbon

Miscellaneous

Spring Picket Fence Card

| ullycatdesigns

This card was designed for Craft Roulette episode #153 whose perimeters were:

  • Project: Rounded Edge
  • Colors: 2 Blues + 2 Additional Colors
  • Element: Flowers
  • Random: Fussy cut

If you haven’t watch this fun Friday night YouTube crafting show https://www.youtube.com/c/CraftRoulette) which has a game show theme and hosted by Mary Gunn. Each week Mary and a guest crafter spin the roulette wheel to randomly pick four perimeters that crafters should use to make a card for that week. Mary and the guest crafter also  make cards using the perimeters during the remainder of the hour. Randomly chosen winners from each week’s submissions receive prizes. On March 17, 2023 the guest crafter will be Karen Burniston. (website: https://craftroulette.live/show)

For my Craft Roulette submission card I took an accordion fold design, I had made a template for, but hadn’t constructed yet.

Having experimented with Karen Burniston’s Landscape Rectangle Accordion and cutting the pivot panel into other shapes. For this card I took inspiration from a pivoting die that Karen Burniston had designed for Elizabeth Craft Designs that had a house and a picket fence.

I made a template from heavy cardstock (110 lb) by first cutting an accordion panel and then tracing around a die-cut of the fence portion of the House Pivot Card die to create the fence pattern. (Make sure you don’t cut away the pivot mechanism at the top and bottom of the panel. The center point of the rectangle is the scored fold-line.) I fussy cut the pattern and then used it to trace onto my die-cut panels of patterned, pale blue cardstock.

After tracing the fence onto the panels I cut the fence out using a metal ruler and craft knife to cut all the straight edges and scissors for the curved parts. I used a small corner punch to round the accordion frame corners, folding the tab to be rounded as well.

Because my fence was cut from blue cardstock, I had to color or whitewash the pickets with an white opaque marker. The flowers are small flowers from the following Karen Burniston die sets: Fireplace Extras 2, Tiny House Pop-Up, Flowers and Bee, and Flower Pot Pop-Up. (The flowers in Flowers and Bee and the Flower Pot Pop-Up are the same.) I used yellow posy flatback gems as the purple flower centers. The grass was cut from a spotted green paper using the grass from Long Nature Edges.

“Happy Birthday” is a die cut sentiment using a navy-blue star patterned paper. A personal message can be written on the backside of the frames and fence posts.

The card fits an A2 size envelope.

Thank you for reading this blog post. I hope this inspires you and makes you smile. Please like and leave comments 😊

For more Accordion Fold cards click here.

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • Dress My Craft – 12 x12 Scrapbooking Papers 240 GSM – Chickoo & Friends
  • Colored Cardstock and Paper Scraps

Pens/Gels

  • Faber-Castell – Pitt Artist Pen 2,5 – White -101
  • Gel Pen – Neon Orange

Adhesives

Tools

  • Die Cutting Machine
  • Quickstik Tool
  • Pokey Tool
  • Scissors
  • Tweezers
  • Metal Ruler
  • Craft Knife
  • Pencil
  • Small Corner Punch
  • Small Ball-Tipped Stylus

Miscellaneous

  • Queen & Co. – Posies Topping – Golden

Floral Thoughts

| ullycatdesigns

For this card I used a floral window die and stamp set by Memory Box that was the gift with issue 97 of the Die-Cutting Essentials magazine. The die makes an image using tiny holes and cuts out the aperture inside the wreath. I die-cut it on a 5.5 x8.5 piece of heavy pink cardstock and then stitched it completely before trimming it down to the final 5.5-inch square to fit on a 6-inch square cardbase.

Using the needle, enlarge the holes before stitching. The larger flower petals and leaves were outline or chain stitched before filling in the centers of them using two strands of floss. The yellow stamens are French knots.

The accompanying sentiment stamps provided the “Thinking of You” was heat embossed directly to the back mat after determining the placement with the stitched frame. The frame was attached to the 6-inch square of patterned paper with thin foam squares.

If you enjoyed this stitched card, there are more stitched card posts on this blog site:

Thank you for reading this blog post. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies & Stamps

  • Memory Box – Floral Window All-Occasion Die & Stamp Set – Die-Cutting Essentials, issue 97, December 2022

Ink & Embossing Powder

  • Clear Emboss & Watermark Ink
  • Gold Embossing Powder

Papers

  • Pink Heavy Weight Cardstock
  • Queen & Co. 6”x 6” Mat Stack – Candy Land

Miscellaneous

  • Yellow, Pinks, & Green Embroidery Floss
  • Large Eyed Needle
  • Foam squares
  • Die-Cutting Machine
  • Stamping Platform
  • Heat Tool

Poppin’ Hexagon Flower

| ullycatdesigns

Karen Burniston’s December 2022 release of new dies has a lot of pop in it. This hexagon flower card is a cross between an explosion box and a flower bud slowly opening.

To make cut eight of the largest hexagons in the Hexagons – Crosshatch die set and six hinges from the Tag Book Pop-Up set which are 1 x 2 inch rectangles. Fold the hinges at the score lines.

Pick one hexagon to be the flower center. Begin gluing one hinge to the underside of the center hexagon matching the edge of the hexagon to the lowest fold on the hinge. Glue a petal hexagon to the hinge matching the petal edge to the highest fold of the hinge.  Continue attaching hinges and petals to center hexagon until all sides are completed.  Glue the remaining hexagon over the hinges on the underside of the center hexagon. (This will be where a personal message can be written.)

Using the smaller crosshatch hexagon dies, cut decorative papers to attach to the petals and center hexagons.

Make a Mini Ball Pop-Up in yellow.  Glue to center hexagon. Make and attach a bee from Flutter Charms die set.

The sentiment uses both the Happy Birthday and its shadow die cut in the polka-dot paper. I used some Nuvo Aroma Drops to cover the words and to add some scent to this flower card.

For the sentiment band I used two pieces of decorative cardstock one piece long enough to wrap around the closed flower and the second piece cut to the width of the closed flower.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • American Crafts – The Color of Memories – 12×12 patterned paper -320473
  • Crafter’s Companion – Vintage Tea Party from Cardmaking & Papercraft magazine
  • Hot Off The Press – 12 x12 double-sided paper – Dotted Duos #2 – pink
  • Echo Park – Happy Easter by Laura Passage and Nicole Seitler – Easter Eggs
  • Pink lightweight cardstock
  • Yellow heavyweight cardstock

Miscellaneous

A Gardening Birthday

| ullycatdesigns

The love of being outdoors and helping plants grow is what being a green thumb is all about. This is a birthday card for a lovely lady whose happy place is working with her plants.

Using Karen Burniston’s August 2022 release of the Label Charm Pop-Up die set makes it easy to add a hanging water can charm from her previously released Garden Charms set.  The double-sided papers are all from Craft Consortium’s Hackney & Co.’s Gardeners Delight collection. Watch an assembly video for a charm pop-up card before starting the card.

For the card base I used an 11 x 4.25-inch piece of patterned paper (strawberries on front and dark gray with flowers on the back.) With the pivot label dies, I like to use double-sided tape to adhere the decorative backing paper. If you put tape around the edges and pull back the tape’s backing paper at the corners only, you can re-position the decorative backing paper until it fits and then pull the all the tape’s backing paper.

Fold the card base in half and place the pivot label die in the center of the card front. Tape in place with removable tape and open the card base out to die-cut.  (Save the cut-out waste pieces to use as decorations for other parts of your card.)

Cut three of the label die from the patterned paper. Tape two of the labels together and then die-cut the oval from it. Trim the tab off one of the oval frames. Glue the tab from the solid label to one of the oval frames then glue the other oval frame to cover up the tab.  Punch a hole for the charm to hang from (The die has a hole to use a stencil.) I reverse cut the watering can to pour to the right from silver card stock. The metal jump ring I used has a rhinestone dangle. I find it easier to attach the jump ring with the charm to the oval frame before I glue the label and oval frame into the card.

Now to decorate the card. I had garden charms left from another project where I had “dirtied-up” the tools and gloves with brown ink dabbed on with a small finger sponge dauber.  The tiny hearts are from the heart eyeglasses in the Tiny Accessories 2 set. The plant is from the Garden Charms set. I used the cut-out waste pieces from the front pivot label to frame the inside label with slicing patterned with solid color pieces.

I felt the inside of the card need more decorative elements, so I cut strips of flowers from the Long Nature Edges 2 set from white and used yellow Nuvo drops to make them into strawberry blossoms. (Remember to let the Nuvo Drops dry at least 16-24 hours before gluing them into the card. They will stick to each other until totally dry.)

The Sentiments come from the Garden Charms set and Word set 2.  The various white labels are part of the Label Charms Pop-Up set as are the white outline flowers on the front of the card.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

Inks

  • Ranger – Tim Holtz’s Distress Ink – Vintage Photo
  • Fine-tipped green marker

Miscellaneous

Bee-utiful Flowery Painting

| ullycatdesigns

Bees, fresh paint and tulips seem like harbingers of Spring as we humans come out of winter hibernation.  I had some of the paint brush die sets from the Spellbinder’s Paint Your World Collection by Vicky Papaioannou as well as the Picket Fence Studio’s I Bee Fierce stamp set by Nicole Peterson on my crafting desk and thought they went well together. 

Having die-cut four sets of paint brushes from three of the die sets, I set about assembling the brushes noting that the handle pieces are not interchangeable, but all three sets have the same bristles die. I glued one layer of bristles to the back of each handle and another layer of bristles to the back of the silver band. Next, I studied the packaging for decorative ideas on the placement of the tulips within the bristles. I glued in place the leaves and flowers once I had figured out their placement in the two layers of bristles. I decided to ink blend some pink Distress Ink onto white cardstock scraps before die-cutting the paint drips.  I applied glue the silver band layer just on the back of the band and then placed it on top of the handle layer matching up the two lines on the band with the lines on the handle. Once the paint drips were dry, they were glued to the back of the assembled paint brushes.

Following the design rule of odd numbers of elements, I knew I had to stamp three elements to make the card front flow. Another design trick is to suggest movement by placing things on the diagonal.

I stamped the front, back and inside of the card before I adhered the paint brushes to the card. Stamping is easy when you use a stamping platform with stamping tool to help apply even pressure to the stamps. The back of the card is stamped using a Technique Tuesday stamp set.

The front sentiment is “I am little but I bee fierce,” while the inside says, “Be like the bee… fly despite the risks.” The back of the card states “This is a random act of cardiness.”

The envelope back was stamped with another sentiment from the Picket Fence set as well as the smaller bee. It says “that hum you hear is the sound of the mighty bee recreating our world with love, song and perseverance.”

Thank you for reading this blog post. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Stamps

Inks & Pigments

  • Ranger – Jim Holtz’s Distress Oxide Ink – Abandon Coral
  • Memento Fade-Resistant Dye Ink – Tuxedo Black
  • Nuvo Highly Pigmented Watercolour Pencil – Golden Canary

Papers

  • Heavyweight white cardstock
  • Colored cardstock scraps
  • Coated cardstock from junk mail
  • Silver mirrored cardstock from packaging
  • Brown #10 business envelope

Miscellaneous

Olga’s Garden

| ullycatdesigns

Olga Direktorenko is the creative designer behind the Paper Discovery brand sold by Craftstash out of the UK and carried by Paper Wishes in the USA. I love her dimensional dies sets that often feel like creating a doll’s house or miniature scenes.

On Craftworld, she talks of her garden with vegetables and Ukrainian sunflowers in one of her video demos. This card is my first time out using her Garden Delight dies which are copyrighted in 2021. I purchased them from Paper Wishes.

The side dies cut and score accordion folds that easily create tunnel-like cards. Her garden accessories allow for fun details, but like doll house accessories, not all are on the same scale. I placed the wheelbarrow in the middle layer because I felt it was of a larger scale than the picket fence.

I colored the garden frame using colored papers. The flowered vines reminded me of purple morning glories common in the USA. I cut the frame die, several times in several colors to fussy cut and glue the vines, flowers, birds, rope, bird houses and ladder on to the white base frame.

For the sunflowers have two flower head dies and are intended to be glued on top of each other with the petals alternating to create a full flower. Using a black gel pen, I colored the seed heads that are embossed with the die.

The white lattice background is glued to some blue patterned paper recycled from an envelope.

The sentiment “Hello Sunshine” is a die-cut from Sue Wilson of Creative Expressions. (While there are stamps that go with the Garden Delights collection there are no sentiments.)

This card will collapse to fit into a 5 inch by 7 inch envelope.

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Dies

Inks

  • Black gel pen

Papers

  • White cardstock
  • Colored cardstock and paper scraps (recycled envelopes and junk mail)
  • Blue patterned scrap paper (inside of envelope)
  • Hunkydory mirri card from the oxidized metals collection

Additional Supplies:

  • We R Memory Keepers – Quickstik Tool
  • Low tack tape

Sending Violet Hugs

| ullycatdesigns

In the language of flowers, violets mean remembrance. Sometimes there aren’t words to express the comfort a hug can bring when someone is suffering a loss.  This card is meant to be up-lifting and offering comfort and hope.

Using recent PoppyStamps Flower Field Tall Curve Border, Penelope Pinpoint Frame and Sending Hugs Poe Script dies to create this card front, I used the solid green back of a striped A2 card base to be the background to the lattice work. Thin foam squares were used to raise the lattice frame off the green card base. (Dies-R-Us often stocks PoppyStamps dies as well as other name brand dies and stamps at discounted prices. The links under the Materials Used section links to Dies-R-Us.)

Scrap white cardstock was ink blended on both sides to create the die-cut violets. Four times the flower border was cut with the two glued to the front of the white lattice work frame.  The remaining borders were cut apart and the petals were bent to curl upward. These flowers were glued at the center to the base border flowers using a hand-held stylus with a tiny round tip to move and push the flower centers down into the glue. A dot of yellow Nuvo Drops completed the center of each flower.

The “Sending Hugs” was die cut from matte gold cardstock which was found on cookie packaging.

The inside sentiment “Happiness blooms from within” is from a new stamp set by PoppyStamps – Colorful Life. Another sentiment, “Bloom and Grow,” is from the same sent and is stamped in a gold ink on the envelope flap.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Stamps

  • PoppyStamps – Clear Stamp Set – Colorful Life – CL509

Inks

  • Ranger – Jim Holtz’s Distress Oxide Ink – Chipped Sapphire, Shaded Lilac, Dusty Concord, Stormy Sky, Prize Ribbon
  • Stampin’ Up – Classic Stampin’ Pad – Crumb Cake

Papers

  • Lightweight white cardstock
  • Matte gold cardstock
  • A2 green striped card base and white envelope

Miscellaneous