Sunflowers

I needed to make two birthday cards for the same date, so I made the rare decision to make two similar cards, although I normally get bored on a design after one card.

This sunflower collage stamp is the first stamp I ever bought and one I had huge problems with at the beginning. I didn't get a good picture out of it, the result was always either smudged or there were parts missing. I first tried to use a paint roller to spread the ink as I thought I didn't get the ink on the stamp evenly enough. It didn't help. Then I tried stamping while standing. I did help a bit, but not enough. Finally I realised that the problem was the table. I needed a softer surface to stamp on, and putting a foam mouse pad under the paper did the trick.


I stamped the sunflower collage on yellow paper and cut it out. I cut 6" one-sided card blank from white card stock. I took a piece of wide sunflower-patterned ribbon and removed the metal wires, then I stuck the ribbon in the middle of the card blank (I tried first aligning it a bit to left but it didn't seem to work) and fixed the stamped image on top of the ribbon. As a final touch, I added a small peel-off greeting to the bottom right corner.

As the back of the card was looking quite empty, I stamped a single sunflower on the upper right corner (so that I could wrap the text around it and make it look like there was more than mere "Happy birthday"...) and coloured it in with coloured pencils. As the ready-made 6" envelopes are hard to come by, I made my own from muted yellow paper and stamped a sunflower on the lower left corner.