Paper Bouquet

Here are a few pictures of the finished paper bouquet that I made for my niece.  She is a fabulously crafty person, so I knew she'd appreciate the work that went into it.  The flowers are made from a template that you can find here, which I printed onto patterned paper and pages ripped out of an old dictionary.  Each petal is glued onto a 12" piece of florist wire, and then the stem is wrapped with floral tape.  The cutting takes a bit of time, but the assembly is fairly painless:

A Vibrant 50th Birthday

I have a friend who loved a card that I made a few months back... and asked me to make something similar in vibrant colours for a friend who was turning 50.  I reoriented it to be a sideways card due to the large sentiment, and made it about as vibrant as is humanly possible:

All product is CTMH: Cardstock is Hydrangea, Watermelon & Ocean (all retired), Black, Pear & White Daisy; Ink is Pear; Stamp set is Gracious Greetings.  Opaque pearls.  Nestabilities die. 

Heart2Heart Wedding Challenge

It's wedding week on the Heart2Heart Challenges Blog... and the design team has some wonderful inspiration for you!  We have a new guest designer playing with us this month, the talented Jena DeVries, so be sure to see what she has to show us this week.  If you play in the month of June, you have a chance to win one of two prize packs given out by Michelle Owen and Romaine Rancine, and you may be selected as one of our monthly Top Ten.  Just link up your project to the H2H blog, and be sure to use some CTMH product in your project.  For my wedding card, I went mostly white (not my usual thing!), kept the colours soft, and added a bit of bling:

I masked off the outside 3/8" around the card, and then stamped the Wings wotg background stamp in Versamark and then heat embossed it with some sparkly white embossing powder that I've had kicking around forever (it's actually called "Bridal!") - this pic doesn't show the irridescent sparkle of the embossing, so I'll make sure to add another one that does.  I used 2 different pinks for the flowers...and now that I think of it, this card reminds me a lot of my own wedding dress.  I wore a very pale pink gown, and made dozens of silk flowers in different shades of pink to sew onto it, along with pale green leaves!

Stamp sets are Wings, You're Invited & Our Wedding Day; Inks are Versamark, Grey Wool & Sweet Leaf; Cardstock is White Daisy, Baby Pink, Blush & Sweet Leaf; Opaque Pearls; - all CTMH. Nestabilities die. Bridal Embossing powder from Personal Stamp Exchange.

Colour Challenge on Heart2Heart

We have an interesting colour combo of Creme Brulee, Gypsy & Black as this week's Heart2Heart challenge! 

A few of us on the design team found this a bit difficult - but the end results by everyone are incredible!  So be sure to check out all the inspiration ideas over at the blog, along with the creation by this week's guest designer, Angie Parchey.  Angie is also one of our prize sponsors for the month of March, along with Lori Brown.  I knew right away that I was going to do something floral for this week's card, so I made a few paper roses, and then realized that our Just Blooms paper flowers came in Creme Brulee, too!  After playing with my little grouping of flowers, I added a few punched ones, and then needed to somehow add some leaves and vines to round it out... but green isn't part of the challenge, and black leaves seemed a little gruesome!  So I came up with the idea to stitch a few wispy tendrils in black thread.  I sketched them out first, and then traced them with the sewing machine.  Voila!

Here's a closeup of the flowers:

and one of my little wisps:

Remember that your project (doesn't have to be a card!) should be mostly CTMH, and if you don't have the exact colours - use something close.  All supplies are CTMH: Stamp set is Gracious Greetings; Inks are Black, Creme Brulee & Gypsy; Cardstock is Black, White Daisy, Creme Brulee & Gypsy; Licorice & White Opaque Pearls.  Punches are Marvy & Martha Stewart.