July's Flowers of the Month

Daring Cardmakers Day again and as it's the first Friday of the month it's a flowery one this week.  The flowers associated with July are the Larkspur and the Water Lily.  On a few occasions I've been glad there are two flowers to choose from - but this time I hadn't a clue about what I could do with either of them - not a good start!

 It didn't help that when I googled on Larkspur there didn't seem to be a definitive answer as to whether it was the same as a delphinium or a related plant. I love delphiniums with those tall showy spikes and fabulously flamboyant colours - if only I could grow them - I've tried a few times but failed dismally, but I digress....(again)

I gave up on the Larkspur and settled for the water lily,  I find a good starting point is searching the web either for videos or for "punch art" and the name of the flower I'm interested in.  Even if I can't find instructions there's often some pictures or something else that helps me come up with a plan. 

 Having my trusty Craft Robo means I can usually make templates for the shapes I need, and this turned out to be fairly simple - all you need is a couple of 12 petalled flowers and lots of little starburst shapes for the centre.  I found a clipart picture to use for the petals and then used the 9 pointed star (Star5) in the templates that come with Craft Robo.

 The background is a photograph I took of Water Lilies at the Marie-Nui Gardens on Raratonga in the Cook Islands - those colours aren't subtle, are they? hehe

I used:

14cm square card blank, 
Card: fuchsia pink, purple, dark green, 
Photograph printed on plain white card, 
Apple green ribbon, Purple button, Pink baker's twine, 
Dewdrops in green and purple, Glamour Dust glitter, 
Glossy Accents for water drops on the flower, 
Home made decal rub-on

There are lots of beautiful cards to see on the Daring Cardmakers BLOG this week so I hope you'll take a look and of course we'd love you to join in!  We have a prize this week too - a gorgeous card-making kit from our new sponsor; on-line craft store Crimson Cloud

Just make a card and check the Three Little Rules for a chance to win this little bundle of goodies:

I tried to blog the latest pages for my mini album the other day but gave up when Blogger wouldn't load my photos.  So I'll add that over the weekend (if I remember...), but that's all for now.

Thanks for popping by