This is the card I made for swapping at the local Spring Fling stamping event that I went to today! Well, actually this is the version I made for my swaps, which I did in island indigo and calipso coral. The card that I made that inspired this card, which I handed in for my door prize ticket is below... Can you see the differences?
On my original card I sponged coral ink behind the mixed bunch coral flower, and the center flower is edge sponged with coral as well. Also the pearl is smaller in the middle than the cards I made to swap. The little flowers are from the boho blossoms punch - there are 3 flowers in this punch.
I had received my order of large pearls right after making my first card, so decided to try using one of them for the center, and it just didn't look right with the smallest boho blossom flower. It was too small I thought. Then I tried the middle flower and then the biggest flower but something just wasn't right. So I put the other middle-sized and large flowers together and they looked "just right" with the large pearl. I dabbed the flowers in the inkpad before putting them together with the large pearl - here are pictures of how the center flower was made:
Now that I started from the end of making this swap card, I'll tell you how to make it from the beginning! In this case, it won't ruin the "story" since I already told you the ending LOL. These are the supplies you will need, along with the large pearls - BTW, since we only had to do the card fronts, these directions are for card fronts only (4 1/4" x 5 1/2") whisper white.
First I prepared the card fronts, using calipso coral and island indigo, which were sponged on the edges, stamped the Happiness greeting from the Apothecary Art stamp set, and embossed the hearts edgelits on the left side of the cards. I prepared 11 with the coral ink and 11 with the island indigo ink.
After stamping the Apothecary Art stamp with pool party ink on pool party cardstock, I cut it out with the matching diecut. The stamp that I used is the smallest Apothecary Art stamp with flowers on it and a band down the middle; mine was in box #1. I edged the stamp with matching ink and then put a strip of the red sticky tape on the band (this is where the pool party seam binding ribbon ruching will go). I decided not to dab ink on the 22 swaps cards because you really couldn't see it.
In order to make sure the waffle paper strip I cut (about 1" wide) fit half of the Art stamp, I folded it in half to find the center. I put the red sticky tape down the side of half the Apothecary Art stamp and adhered the waffle paper to it, starting from the center. I made a little pleat about every 1/2" to fit the side of the Art stamp, and since I had only put the tape on half of the back of the Art stamp, I could easily tell how much more I had to pleat until the end.
If you don't press the waffle paper down hard when you put put it on, you can simply pull it off to adjust your pleats - once you have the waffle paper pleats where you want them, you can press it down harder with your fingers.
I trimmed the front of the waffle paper so it taped at each end and put dimensional pop ups on the back.
Now you're ready to use the pool party seam binding ribbon on the front of the Art stamp - I did some ruching of the ribbon on each end (which is like messy pleating!) and since the blossom would be in the center, I didn't do any ruching there. You can see from the pictures how the ends were left long and trimmed to fit the card.
The mixed bunch flowers were stamped on whispering white cardstock in indigo or coral, punched out, and the edges were curled. Dimensional popups were put on the back of the flowers, and then adhered to the cards.
The last step was doing the little flowers with the pearl centers, which was explained in the beginning of the post...Now you have the entire story! This was a fun swap to do because I got to use so many new Stampin Up items on it!!
After I take the pictures that I took at today's Spring Fling stamping event off my disk I will post pictures of the beautiful projects we made, and some of the fun things we did!! So please come back and check them out OK?
