My thought was let’s make something besides “new” or Valentine for this post! I looked through my designer papers and ended up with this Mediterranean Blooms Hello Card. After making a lot of simpler cards lately, I’m inclined to call this card a “masterpiece”. And that made me think that we stampers should more often think of our creations as “masterpieces” because they really are unique and special and while stamping is simple enough that anyone can do it, each card we make is almost always pretty special!
For this card I used a sample in the Stampin’ Up! Annual Catalog with the Mediterranean Blooms Suite for inspiration. Or to copy, you might say! As always, though, mine came out slightly different from the original sample. You can see it on page 34 of the Annual Catalog.
The card base is Night of Navy cardstock. I think the sample may have used a piece of cardstock stamped with the small images in the stamp set randomly for a background. I used a piece of the Mediterranean Blooms Designer Series Paper for the background. On top of that designer paper I adhered a diecut leafy frame piece. This piece was cut out of Basic White cardstock using two dies in the Citrus Blooms Dies set. One die is the leafy design but there is also a frame with decorative corners to be placed around it so that the edge is diecut in a decorative way. You can place these two dies together on the paper and run through the Stampin’ Up! Cut & Emboss Machine or you can cut out the leafy frame leaving a border around the edge and then run that through separately with the frame.
In the center I have a piece of Boho Blue cardstock, cut at 1″ x 4″. It is popped up on Stampin’ Dimensionals. I used some Lemon Lolly twine from the Baker’s Twine Three Color Pack to wrap around this Boho Blue piece and around the designer paper that will layer on the cardstock. This was done before anything was adhered to the card base. In the sample, the different thread went under the center piece and around the entire card, meaning the thread would show on the inside of the card, which is fine, I’m just describing the placement. I also tied a separate bow and adhered it with a single glue dot underneath.
To embellish the card design, I diecut a bunch of leaves out of Soft Sea Foam cardstock. It would have been good to use Adhesive Sheets underneath before diecutting since the leaves are so narrow, but I just put tiny dots of glue on the backs of the leaves. I have a special bottle that does put out tiny drops of glue, but otherwise I would probably make a puddle of the Multipurpose Liquid Glue on a scrap piece of cardstock and use a toothpick to apply it to the small pieces. I just stuck these leaves randomly under the center piece, so you don’t want a solid piece of adhesive foam underneath the Boho Blue piece because you want to be able to find space for the leaves to go underneath.
Now if you like the Soft Sea Foam green but want a little bit more color in it, you can take a Soft Sea Foam Stampin’ Blend, in both Light and Dark, to just “slightly” add color to the leaves for a little shading. If you forget, you can still do it after they are adhered on the card, just don’t get the ink on the white leafy frame.
The greeting on the card is stamped with two stamps in the Citrus Blooms Stamp Set. The white circle is diecut with one of the small circles in the Stylish Shapes Dies. “Hello” is stamped in Night of Navy ink. The second greeting is just stamped on a strip of Lemon Lolly cardstock, also in Night of Navy ink. The circle is popped up on Stampin’ Dimensionals. The word strip is adhered flat over the circle with a Stampin’ Dimensiona or two to hold up the end.
There are die cut flowers out of Daffodil Delight with dies in the Citrus Blooms Dies. I tried to poke the center of some of these to make the petals stick up a little bit. These are just glued down randomly. Finally, I used some Opal Rounds gems in Clear and one Daffodil Delight in the center of the one large flower above the greeting. You could use many other gems, sequins, or jewels to embellish this card.
Here is another Citrus Blooms card I made and used the same die frame to cut out designer paper for the background of the card.
I know sometimes we forget about the Annual Catalog products which we only use exclusively for a couple of months until the Holiday Mini comes out, followed by the Spring Mini catalog. Don’t forget to look back at your older products and see what you’d like to use!
Additional Sale-A-Bration choices are coming on Tuesday, February 4th if you want to see what those products will be. Remember, with every $60 purchase, you earn a FREE product from the Sale-A-Bration brochure, available through the end of February. This is a promotion Stampin’ Up! offers every year which we all love because we love free Stampin’ Up! products any time!
