Hello, I'm Back

Hi blogger friends. Have you missed me (grin)? I have been visiting wonderful friends in Indianapolis since Friday -- got home last night about 10:30 pm. Can't really express in words what a delightfully fun time I had, but I now have some new, fantastic memories. Three other friends and I spent the four days at the home of my friend, Bonnie, chatting (lots), laughing (lots) and crafting (lots).

The little card above is one that I made while on my visit. The idea came from a card we saw at the Indy Archiever store. (You can see the inspiration card at http://www.archiversonline.com/events/438 It is the card with the tulips.) Of course, the five of us had to add our own individual touches, in my case, the little mini-Magnolia butterfly image. We also used a different background stamp than the inspiration card (Stampendous Stamp P116-R, Flower Fields), and we added our hand-made flowers. (To be perfectly honest, I had to look up what the original inspiration card looked like. As you will see, if you go to the Archiever link, we completely altered it (grin).)

The base of my card is made from a plum coloured cardstock. On top of that, I placed a green mat. The background image was stamped in green on white card. The supplies we used belong to Bonnie, so we used what we had on hand. The stamp has flowers with long stems, so anything in your own stash that is similar would work. Because we knew we would be covering most of the flowers, the stems and leaves were the only things we were concerned with; thus, we just stamped the entire image using green ink. We then cut three flowers from fleece (we did decide that craft felt might have worked better because it is a heavier/stiffer material) using a rolling flower die (you know, the kind that gives you a spiral that you then roll into the flower shape). The completed flowers were adhered on top of the stamped stems. We added the green and white ribbon because the zig-zag green reminded us of grass. We then cut a tiny tag from a Cricut cartridge (I think it was Picturesque). Some of us tied the tag to the knot of the ribbon bow using thin twine. I chose to stick mine behind my bow instead.

I already had the mini-Magnolia stamp coloured up, so I fussy cut it. Those mini images are really tiny, so are not easy to fussy-cut. I don't recommend it unless you have lots of patience, which I don't have. In fact, can't believe I did it (LOL); however, I did not want anything obstructing the flower stems behind the little butterfly girl. To finish it off, I added pearls and a gem to the center of the flowers, a punched butterfly (think I remember that being a Martha Stewart punch), and my little tag that reads, "Hello."

What was really fun about this little card was seeing how different they all turned out. Five of us basically created the "same" card, but they didn't look the same at all. We each added our own touches which individualized each card and kept them from looking like duplicates. Really fun experiment.

I will enter this card in the following challenges:

http://flutterbywednesdays.blogspot.com/2012/02/flutter-by-wednesday-190.html - Flutterby Wednesday, Things with Wings
http://stampingscrappingchallengecentral.blogspot.com/ - Say it with Flowers (Little Tilda is coloured with Copic markers on Cryogen paper - both sold at Stampingscrapping.com)
http://crazychallenge.blogspot.com/ - Use a Die
http://cutiepiechallenge.blogspot.com/ - Flowers
http://cutedaisymay.blogspot.com/ - 3D Project