'Oh Happy Day' - CAS flower card

Another card with flowers. What can I say? It must be Spring! This floral image is a digital one from A Day For Daisies: Flowers in Bottles.

I filled the background of the image in Photoshop with a very pale patterned digital paper (to look like wallpaper) then printed it & coloured it with Copic Markers:

The image is cut out so that the tallest flower pops out of the frame in the 'outside of the box' technique & it's mounted on some lined paper with foam tape for dimension. Quick and easy!

And the sentiment is from this sweet little Avery Elle stamp set:

 'Oh Happy Day'

Hope you're having the loveliest of happy days,


P.S. The dotted paper that I used to line the envelope is a free printable that you can find here.

Gift idea: round note pad with a 3D Flower

A little gift idea that is hopefully something out of the ordinary
that you can make (with supplies you already have)
for someone on your gift giving list, any time of the year:



A round note pad with a 3D flower.

But the part I like best about it is that it's sized to fit
inside an antique silver pedestal dish:


The dish has a 5 inch width or diameter so the note pad
is about 4 inches in diameter.

You can find all kinds of little dishes at secondhand shops
(made of silver plate or glass or any other materials)
and create your own note pads to fit them.

The flower is sturdy since it's made of140lb watercolour paper:



And the notebook covers are made of doubled-up watercolour paper
circles -- which makes for a nice sturdy material
(like chipboard only far easier to cut with a circle cutter).

The covers are hinged on ribbon so it's flexible for opening & closing:



The inside pages are cut from copy paper (acid-free but so affordable)
They are tied in with thin satin ribbon, so the note pad is refillable.
(Giving extra pages along with it will mean it can be a keepsake).

...make a round note pad
(in a silver dish):

• 140 lb watercolour paper or thick cardstock
• digital patterned paper (or regular patterned paper)
• copy paper & a circle cutter
  
• seam binding ribbon, hole punch
  
• paper piercer needle & thread
• a 3D flower. This one was made with...
• ...watercolour paper, IO damask stamp...
  
• ...clear embossing powder, heat gun, & distress inks
  

Here are all the pieces used to make this round note pad:

Large flower to decorate the cover
Front cover: numbered 1 & 2 in the photo above.
Back cover: numbered 3 & 4
Inside pages: numbered 5



Step 1a) Make the front & back covers

1a) Make the front cover:

A) Cut & paste a snippet of a digital pattern big enough for two circles or use patterned paper. (I used this good morning digital kit and recoloured it green.)
B) Print onto 140 watercolour paper for texture & heft.
C) Cut out the circles.
D) Add stitching, if you like, hiding the ends on the back.

E) Add some seam-binding ribbon to the back of one of the 2 front cover pieces



Step 1b) Make the back cover pieces:

A) Print a solid colour onto watercolour paper.
B) Cut circles & punch holes for tying in the note pad pages.
C) Pierce & stitch around the circles, if you like.

To assemble, make a ribbon hinge...



...sandwiched between the double cover pieces.



Step 2) Sandwich the two front cover pieces around two pieces of seam-binding ribbon. Add double-sided tape to one side of the seam-binding that sticks out.



Step 3) Remove the backing of the doublesided tape. Pull the ribbon down to make a V shape with it & hold it with your thumb. (Note if the ribbon is too tight the cover won't open so leave a little room for play).



Step 4) Take those back cover pieces (above) ... and...



Lay the sticky ribbon piece onto the inside of the back piece & affix the double-sided tape.
Lift it up to add rest of back cover.



Step 5) press the second part of the back cover on



Step 6a) Make the pages. Cut pages slightly smaller than the covers & punch holes in the tops of them (to line up with the holes in the back cover).



Step 6b) Tie the pages in with ribbon (so it's a refillable note pad).



Step 7) Make a 3D flower to top it all off!

to make the flower:

A)Cut a piece of watercolour paper to fit the printer: 8.5" x 11" for a standard printer.
B) Print different sizes of a flower shape onto the watercolour paper.
C) On the back of the printed flowers, stamp Impression Obsession Damask Cover a Card background stamp in clear Versamark ink.
D) Sprinkle clear detail embossing powder onto wet ink & heat it with heat gun.
E) Cut out the flower shapes (using the printed flowers as a guide) I made mine just a teensy bit less pointy to get a more rounded look).
F) For a resist embossing look, cover the embossed cardstock with distress inks & water.
G) While the flowers are still damp, shape them with your hands.
H) Stick the flowers together with a good strong glue.
I) To make a center: cut a long strip of watercolour paper; colour it grey with markers or paint; cut a fringe into it & roll it into a spiral; fluff the fringe with your fingers & glue the center into the flower.

Finally, fit the notepad into a silver dish, or what have you...

...and there you have it...

a round note pad with a 3D flower to give to someone special,
or to use to organize yourself in style. ;o)

Here's a one page reference guide:

or You can
Download the one page
reference PDF here

about the supplies

The flower was made with this digital Layers flower template:

from A Day For Daisies
&
this Damask IO background stamp:

&
the paper was printed with this Good Morning digi kit

by Shelly Castillo - from Two Peas in a Bucket

recolouring patterns &
making matching solid papers

You can re-tint your papers to change them to any colour
(how to do that in Photoshop here)

And you can make your own solid coloured paper to match your re-tinted digital patterned paper, by pulling a colour from that pattern with the eyedropper tool in Photoshop & filling a new document or a section with that colour. Then you can print it out & make something nifty.



Hope your week is shaping up to be a lovely one!

Sleeping Beauty has a New Fairy Godmother!

I've been working on some digital graphics for a hybrid sleeping beauty

card for a while now, but couldn't get the finishing touches right.
The Lily Pad Cards colour challenge was the perfect inspiration for
teeny coral flowers & wee green leaves!

And it's sponsored by my favourite artist,
Tammy of A Day for Daisies.

Here are Kathy's gorgeous colours for the challenge:

The Sleeping Beauty image is one I bought
a while back from A Day For Daisies

It's called Loves First Kiss



And Sleeping Beauty has a new Fairy Godmother:
(she's hip & hybrid)
The Graphics Fairy!

The Gothic Arches background is a free image shared
here by the generous Graphics Fairy, Karen.
[If you haven't seen her incredible blog, and you love clip art,
then you are in for a treat!]

Click the image, if you'd like to go to Karen's post & download it:

gothic-arch (free from Karen, The Graphics Fairy)

and this is the landscape behind it:

castle landscape (also free from Karen)

Alterations to the images:

1) I reduced the size of both graphics fairy images (since they were nice & big--which makes for great quality when you print them smaller).

2) For the Gothic Arches image, I also reduced the saturation in Photoshop (making the image a little more "black-and-white-ish"... since my printer seemed to make it a little orange). I really wanted it to match kraft coloured cardstock & to be softer. :o)

Make a castle card with cut windows:

(or you could just print out the
combined digital image below)

• Inkjet Printer, Matte medium & clear embossing powder
  
• Speckled ivory cardstock
• Copic markers & Prismacolour pencils
• Edge punch, paper piercer, watercolour pencil to make flowers

I thought it might be fun to make a sleeping beauty card (on a standard A2 card background with Graphics Fairy images).

This method is the cut out the windows and layer the scene in behind method, but I've also combined them digitally and uploaded that in two sizes for you to download if you'd like to save time (linked below).



Step 1) Print, colour, & cut out the sleeping beauty image.

I heat-embossed the ADFD Loves First Kiss digital image by painting matte medium onto speckled cardstock, but you could use Paris Bleedproof cardstock if you want a heat embossed digital image. More about the Paris Bleedproof paper for digi embossing in this post.

...and I did that textured hair thing again (scored curving lines into
her hair with a paper piercing tool to give it texture):

The scored lines seem to make it easier to colour hair.



Step 2) Print Gothic image --at 50%)--on a light cardstock (alter the colour first, if you like). Cut out the windows & half of the door. (I used an exacto blade and as you can see, I didn't worry about making the hidden bits tidy) ;O)



Step 3) Print a small section of the Gothic Arches image & cut it to make the bier for sleeping beauty to lay upon. I made the image darker, before clipping a piece of it in Photoshop & printing it.



Step 4) Print the Landscape image at 33% (You can crop it first to save ink). Place the landscape image behind the Gothic arch windows and trim it to fit. (I overlapped it to get the little hill to show in the left-hand window--the mess will be invisible later muhahaha).



Step 5) Cut out the bier & adhere it to the card. Adhere sleeping beauty on top of it. (add flowers and leaves and glue on a scrap of crochet, if you like.)

(The teensy wee flowers were made with the left overs from an edge punch, coloured with watercolour pencil crayon. The leaves are just cut from some paper coloured with a copic marker)

Step 6) Adhere everything to a folded A2 card (5 1/2" x 4 1/4")...

...and th-th-th-that's all, folks:

I also made a purse template filled with pattern to match,
but had no time to finish it if I wanted to get a card in
for that ADFD Lily Pad challenge.


&

If you don't want to do all the fiddly cutting that I did above:
you can simply print the combined backgrounds, cut out the bier,
add sleeping beauty, and 'garnish' with flowers. ;o)

PDF, PNG and JPEG formats:
Click the images to visit Flickr if you'd
like to download JPEGs.
Click the links for PDFs, or find the PNGs below:

Download PDF for background here


Download PDF for the castle purse here


Download PDF for LARGE background here



JPEG format files:

How to save these PNGs:

1) Click on the small images below
(it should open the full image in your browser)
2) Then right click with your mouse
3) chose the option "save image as PNG"



More on how to Download files
types & terms of use here

I would've simply asked you to visit The Graphics Fairy for these, and not have taken the liberty of sharing the combined images, but it took ages in Photoshop, so I thought I'd save you the work. If you use any of these, be sure to credit Karen & link her, pretty please. :o)

Thanks so much for having a look,