Gardener's delight

When I was trying to find excuses to make cards, my friend said that I could make her a birthday card. As her birthday was two months away, she forgot all about it. I didn't.

As the birthday girl was a keen gardener, I wanted the card to reflect this. I have a tendency to hoard napkins although I seldom make any use of them, so I grabbed the opportunity to do that. I glued a napkin with all sorts of gardening related pictures on white card with spray adhesive. Then I cut out the motives I wanted: a row of pots, wellies, watering cans, and a straw hat. I cut out another set of wellies and water cans for a bit of 3D decoupage.

I used another of my problematic photo aperture card blanks. To add a few flowers to my garden theme, I backed the aperture with a piece of flowered vellum. I glued the wellies on the vellum and perched the straw hat on top of them with a foam pad. The hat needed a feminine touch, so I took a bit of pink embroidery floss and tied it into a bow.

To break the strict lines of the photo aperture, I fixed the watering cans on its bottom right corner. The frame still seemed to lack something, so I cut out the blue butterfly and attached it on the upper left corner to balance the design. Finally, I used the row of pots to edge the envelope and to match it with the card.

Say it with flowers

I made this card for my mother's birthday. Having come up with this nice gift wrap and knowing my mother's fancy for gerberas, this was an easy card to make. I rather like its bold colours.


I stamped the daisy with VersaMark and embossed it with gold embossing powder. To frame and highlight the stamped image, I backed it with a square of red cardstock. Because the gift wrap was so bold, I decided to cool things off with a dose of white. Instead of sticking the gift wrap straight on the red card blank (hot, hot, hot, and "messy", too), I glued it first on white paper. I cut of the excess, leaving a thin white border, and stuck the panel on the base. I used foam pads to fix the stamped image to the card and to give it a bit of dimension.

Spring Greetings

When I got a bunch of card bases with photo apertures from a craft kit, I was puzzled what to do with them as I'm not at all comfortable using photos in cards. Luckily, I found them a perfect companion for small 3D-pictures, here a set of primroses. To soften the look and to add some colour, I backed the aperture with light yellow paper and stamped flowers across the card base with matching ink.