Birthday Blossoms Daisies to Celebrate April Birthdays Part 1

Hi Everyone
Welcome to another issue of our Birthday Blossoms series, the birth flowers for April birthdays are Daisy and Sweet Pea. I have concentrated on daisies as they are such a recognizable flower, plus it gave me chance to play with our new Stampendous Daisy Thanks clear stamp set, which is such a useful and versatile stamp set.

We are giving you the chance to win one of these sets this week, scroll down to find out how you can enter our giveaway competition.

I was on a bit of a roll and made four cards this time so I have split the post into two parts so that you don't get daisy fatigue!

I have used the Daisy Thanks stamp for the first card in the series taking the main stamp but only using part of the image.

I cut and scored yellow card to make an A6 tent fold, card base. I cut a piece of vellum to the same height as the card but 11.5cm wide leaving a margin of card down either side.

I positioned the stamp so that only the flower heads are used, I stamped with white pigment ink and embossed with white embossing powder to make sure that the white image was strong enough to show up against the vellum. The flower centers are colored with a yellow marker pen. The greeting is stamped and embossed the same way.

I fixed the vellum panel to the card using Invisi Dots that are specially made for working with vellum so that they don't show through, I have to admit that I also added a tiny dab of glue at each corner just to be on the safe side!

Materials used:

• Yellow card
• Pure White Vellum
• Frost White pigment ink pad
• White Opaque embossing powder
• Yellow marker pen
• Stampendous Daisy Thanks clear stamp set
• Hero Arts Many Messages clear stamp set
• Glue Dots Invisi Vellum Dots

The idea for the second card came when I spotted some pretty napkins with a daisy design on and decided to make a decoupage card topper.

I started with a 12.5cm square cream blank card, then cut a smaller piece of white card and inked the edges with Old Paper distress ink and layered this onto the base. I made the layer with the script on the computer and printed it onto parchment vellum paper, if you want to make it yourself the font I used was Snell Roundhand size 12 there are lots of other similar fonts if you don't have this one. I have added the file for this to the Free Downloads area so if you prefer you can just download and print it. Once printed I inked the edges with Tea Dye distress ink and darkened the corners with some Vintage Sepia pigment ink.

To make the daisy topper I cut a piece of the paper napkin bigger than the size I wanted to end up with and cut a piece of white card the same size, I peeled the back two layers of the napkin off leaving me with a very thin piece of tissue with the picture on. I covered the card with a layer of PVA glue, laid the napkin on it and brushed more of the PVA over the top of it. I brushed away the worst of the air bubbles taking care not to tear the napkin but leaving some of the imperfections to give it an aged look. When the glue was dry I added a layer of varnish, with hindsight I think this could have been left off as it made the topper look a bit glossier than I wanted. Once the varnish was dry I die cut   the shape.

I die cut a larger shape out of paper from a Christmas pad, inked the edges with gold (which doesn't really show up in the photo), wrapped gold satin ribbon round and tied a bow. I stuck this down onto the card and added some adhesive pearl flourishes and the card topper which I attached with foam mounting pads to lift it a little.

The greeting is stamped in Vintage Sepia onto a die cut tag that has been inked with Tea Dye. I punched a hole at the end and threaded more of the gold ribbon through, this is also attached with foam mounting pads.

Materials used:

• 12.5cm square cream blank card and envelope
• White card
• Patterned paper napkin
• Parchment Vellum paper
• Woodware Crafty Glue (PVA)
• Clear varnish
• Decorative rectangles die cutting set
• Bobunny Terrific Tags cutting dies
• Pearl flourish border
• 1mm foam mounting pads
• 6mm gold satin ribbon
• Tea Dye and Old Paper distress ink pads
• Vintage Sepia and gold pigment ink pads
• Foam ink blending tool
• Jingle All The Way 12 x 12 paper pad
• Spring Crocus Clear Stamp Set
• Hero Arts Happy Stamp and Cut set

Thank you for looking in, I hope you like the cards and look forward to reading your comments.

Debbie x

GIVEAWAY TIME!

This month we are giving away to one lucky person one of the Stampendous Daisy Thanks Clear Stamp Sets pictured at the top of this post.

All you have to do for a chance to win is leave a comment on either this post or the Part 2 post saying which of the four daisy cards you like best and why. Everyone who leaves a comment on either of these two posts before the end of the day March 27th 2017, will be entered into our draw. Good Luck