Handmade flower bouquets on cards

I am still rolling along with my handmade flower cards. There are so many flower cards to be inspired from last week's theme on Less is More. I just can't help myself. Thanks ladies (and any gents too!) for all your inspiration. I am back in card making mode.

This card might look more complicated  but it is still a very simple one, it is just the flowers are spread out. You might notice that some flowers have a contrasting centre which is just where I have two punched flowers layered on top of each other.  That little fern leaf gets quite a work out too! I love doing them in all shades of green!

This card reminds me of my Mother in law. She never liked to let anything go to waste and would often incorporate the scrappy bits left over on stickers on her cards. Here I collected them for ages and made a negative oval. Now that is one pile of scraps that have been used up! Thanks Mum.

I do have one main difficulty with 3D type of cards and that is the posting of them. I have made little boxes for them in the past but mostly I either hand the cards to the recipient or I sell the cards.

How do you get around this if you make 3D type cards?

Flower Power

The Less is More challenge this week was all the encouragement I needed to get back into card making. Once I started I just couldn't stop. Here's to Flower Power!

These flowers are just punched from decorative papers with a little gold Kindy Glitz added for the centres.

Just layered punched flowers then I press them into the palm of my hand to give them a touch of dimension. I popped them onto a small border punched layer onto white then silver cards before the base card.


I have also used many of my handmade flower cards on my Explosion boxes in the past. Here are a couple of links to such boxes. My Asiatic Lily Box, The yellow roses box, and the lilac flower box made from delicate tissues.

I have many many more flowers already made... 

ummmm....

What else shall I come up with????

Handmade Roses Bouquet card

I absolutely love handmade flowers and since I am still in the tortuous route of moving and downsizing my craft room I have found I far too many flowers in various stages of completion. The Less is More theme for week 129 is handmade flowers. I just knew that I would pull out some card supplies and put some of my lovely flowers onto cards. It was all the encouragement I needed to rejoin the card making fraternity.

This delightful red roses bouquet has been created by punching various heart shapes and curling them. The initial inside buds were created by first cutting the hearts in half and gluing it into a cone shape, then I have added more and more hearts with the tips curled out for extra dimensions. The leaves are simply punched and then using a scorer to score the veins. A little ribbon is looped and it is finished by layering the bouquet onto a top layer that has the corners punched before layering onto a base of dark green card.

It has been far too long since I have made a card and certainly since I have posted anything crafty on this blog. I am going to go and make some more. Come back soon.

Lilac Tissue Flower

Sorry it has been a while since I have blogged. I have been busy making all sorts of flowers, but I am running out of room for storing the explosion boxes in my caravan.

When out for dinner one night we were given this lovely purple serviette to cleanse our hands and face... instead I hoarded mine and went back to the van and made it into two 3d tissue flowers. I folded the serviette into 4 and then hand cut the wiggly circle shapes. I separated them into individual layers and then reattached them into two piles with a brad in the centre  of each flower through all layers. To make the flowers I then proceeded to scrunch all the layers separately and then partly open them to create the dimension and interesting petal shapes. I think it kind of looks like an old fashioned rose.

To make the box I used my cuttlebug to emboss 4 top card layers through the textile folder and then edged the card with a sponge and colour swiped off an inkpad.
The little flowers were made with a retro punch and a snowflake punch as stamens and touched in various colour inkpads.  For a change some of the flowers are also up on the acetate strips. I like this look. I may do more like this in future at times.

The small leaves are birch leaf punch from Carl and the swirl is a punch again from Carl. The larger leaves are hand cut following the basic shape of the birch leaf punch but using my deckle edged scissors. My butterflies are hand cut and glittered from a long forgotten museum website.

Here is a close up. Feel free to ask any questions.

I thought my hobby was…

all sorts of card craft, especially making explosion boxes lately but I think it is really browsing the blog looking at everyone else’s fantastic crafts. I have been too tired after working in the heat the last couple of days to even make some flowers so instead I just decided to browse some of my fave blogs and even thought I would look up some of their fave blogs that I haven’t looked at yet! It is unbelievable the amount of talent there is out there and I just can’t seem to leave the computer. It is almost as though I might miss something if I go away and do something else. Consequently there are a few more links I recommend on my side bar. I just can't list them all. My interests and 'taste' changes and so might my links from time to time too.

But today, I am going to discipline myself and show you a couple more of my earlier boxes, since I am up nice and early and church is yet a few hours away before i need to get ready. Then I am going to be super good and finish my latest explosion box. I am getting quite excited by it. It is so different to my earlier work, but more on this in my next post!.

Last year I made two explosion boxes nearly the same. Oriental lilies are the favourite flower of one of my daughters and this inspired me to have a go at designing a flower and thus a box to house it. The flowers were hand cut card which I coloured using sponges & pink ink and a pink art pen to draw on the spots. I then proceeded to roll the petals into shape and glue around the card stamens that I had cut in a quilled style, flaring out the tips and adding a touch of glue & glitter to them. Both boxes had ovals cut using my Nestabilities dies. On Camille’s box I had modified a poem that I found on the net and typed up my version and printed it onto cardstock ensuring that it would fit within the oval before cutting. It wasted a bit more cardstock this way but ensured that it looked a lot neater than so much of my own hand writing would have done. As usual there are butterflies fluttering around. Camille loved her box and I hope you do to.

The second one is so close to being a carbon copy but it is generic and made for sale as a Happy Birthday box.

The boxes and flowers are time consuming. I really don't know how long it takes me to make one box as I rarely sit down and do anything in one go. Once in a while, I might have a couple of boxes on the go at once. It would save more time but I like making each one different and unique. As I have said previously, I make most of the flowers in the car whilst my husband is driving. As we are currently on a big trip around the centre and western part of Australia, there is a lot of driving involved. One day I will time it one time just for curiosity's sake.

Sorry I don't have a close up to show you. I never thought I would have a blog and I just took the photos for my own recollections.  I will endeavour to take a closer up view of some of the details in case anyone is interested with all future boxes.One day I might even make up tutorials if people are interested.

Thank you for looking. Do leave a comment as I would appreciate some feedback as to what you guys think of my blog and boxes. Suggestions are always welcome too.

Some paper flowers to show you

Beautiful Perth viewed from the even more marvellous Kings Park (which I was surprised to learn is larger than Central Park in NYC)

It is so stinking hot here in Perth these last few days. It is 39 degrees C in the shade (that's 102.2 Fahrenheit for you wonderful Americans). It is partly cloudy so I am grateful for that and an air conditioner in the Robbiebago (our caravan). Cooler weather is promised with a storm yet to come and that will bring it down to an expected 31 degrees C (88 in F). So that means it is too hot to work just now, so I am happily sitting down in front of the air con reading some craft mags, catching up on blogs and looking for some inspiration for the new yummy Chatterbox card stock I picked up early this morning when it was still cool enough to run around.

As my husband is committed to some volunteer work here in the outskirts of Perth until next Monday at least and there is no real work for me at present then I have some time to craft and what not.

Anyway as I was tidying up my photo album I rediscovered some photos of flowers that I made last year whilst on the road that I thought you might be interested in. Some have gone onto boxes already and so I will post some boxes too over the next few days. After drooling over some of the Prima flowers at the scrap booking shop I went to this morning I am most envious of their talent... but I will keep making them and hopefully improving as I really get quite a kick out of paper flower making. I am so inspired. I already of thinking of adding more glitter & bling and feathers etc to jazz them up a bit... we'll just have to wait and see how it all turns out.

First off though I am considering making another photo album type Explosion box since the last one was so popular. I might be able to sell one at the next markets I go to.

Christmas Card and Crafts

I am back at last. My husband and I are back on the road. We flew 4,000km back to the other side of the country to continue our trip around Australia in our caravan. We stayed in Perth for 4 days, settling in efore heading south. You can follow our trip if you are interested on our Robbiebago blog. I have been busy cutting out flowers and other images, In the meantime I let me show you some of the craft items I made this past Christmas. First the first time ever I made 50 of the same card design for Christmas. I really wanted to use my lovely poinsettia Spellbinders die and I fell in love with a pleated sort of card design and ends up being an almost exact copy of a card designed by Valita. Click here to see Valita's blog. The leaves were cut on a silver metallic paper with a brand new hole punch which sadly didn’t last the distance, doing less than 5 punches before breaking and punching paper only too! I took it back and replaced it with a L-Em punch that is similar in design. The swirly stamp is embossed with Gold embossing powder. It is about time too as  I don't think I have done heat embossing for a long long time. The triangular pleated feature is very simple and looks great. It is explained in great detail and on Valita's video tutorial for those who like to see it being made.
The note books were commercial notebooks I picked up at Officeworks and I covered them with lovely decorative papers and ribbons. The flowers were hand made by me and are very dimensional and glazed with UTEE. The skeleton leaf is one I bought from Print Blocks eons ago and the green leaf is hand cut and distressed. The letters hearts are chip board from my collection which I painted and/or glittered accordingly.

Hand cutting and shaping the flowers

I quickly discover that to get the size flowers that I want for my explosion boxes, I will have to hand cut the larger blooms. Thankfully I am still a child at heart as I absolutely love cutting (and colouring) and so this does not present a hassle to me.

White open roses tinted with a touch of purple. Mini Photo display style.

I am so lucky in that I am able to cut, colour, shape and glue the flowers whilst on the long drives between places as I do not get car sick at all. So while I chat and listen to my hubby and watch the scenery past, my fingers are busy if I want to craft.

Pink roses on a stamped swirl background that has been glittered

Yellow tinted open roses with hand cut leaves. Swirl is a punch

Procrastination

I don't suppose I am unique but sometimes I am ashamed of how much I can procrastinate. I can start a project and then move on to something else with all good intentions to come back to the original project and it just doesn't happen. I work best to a time frame where I have a birthday or wedding coming up and that both inspires me and motivates me to do a particular project. (Actually I am the same with housework - if I have all day long to do it, then it takes all day and I still may not get it all done, but if I know someone is coming over then I will make a wonderful effort to get it done and some baking and quite often extra cleaning done (that the visitor wouldn't even know about anyway eg clean out my freezer or some such silly thing!)
 Well the point of all this rambling is to let you know that I started my yearly tidying up of my craft room and I rediscovered a scrap album I started for my daughter's 21st. Only problem is that she turned 21 three years ago. it is about time I finish it for her. I am only going to give you teasers for now and I will post the full book when it is finished and she has it in her hot little hands! I am happy to say I finished 3 pages yesterday and added a few additional touches to otherwise finished pages and now I have only the last page to do.

More Early Explosion Boxes

My husband and I were to take our caravan, affectionately called the Robbiebago after my husband,

Robert, who designed and built the van, on a major road trip up the centre of Australia

and down the coast of Western Australia as we joined the great Grey Nomad exodus.

A more formal white on white with a touch of gold. This one holds a gift card in the centre.

Another formal white on white with a touch of pink. This too holds a gift card in the centre.

As I can't travel without some crafts, I quickly decided to concentrate on making explosion boxes

and the flowers to decorate them with. 

I can't stick with just one design either. I love to experiment and that will continue as I go.

Blessings is the saying here. Purple roses adorn a rainbow brayered background.

The white layers (and on the white ones above) are embossed with a cuttlebug folder to give textural interest.

I have all my flower punches  with me - which is only about 5 at this stage -  

but mostly I end up hand cutting the flowers as my punches were not large enough for me.

Open style Floribunda roses quickly become an early favourite.

Early efforts at Explosions Boxes

Here are a few of my earliest efforts at making Explosion Boxes.

My very first one - made for my best friend. Made with commercial silk flowers & rub ons

My first attempt at making my own flowers (from Fred she said blog).

A photo box made with silk flowers

My first stamped box together with my first 3D paper flowers

  I think the silk flowers are nice but I wanted to have a go at making my own flowers.

I wanted a more creative input. It quickly became obvious that butterflies were going to be part of my 'signature' on most of my boxes. I love butterflies. One day I might even try making some.

These butterflies are printed from the internet already coloured. I cut 2 and glue them back to back.