August's Flowers

Throughout this year the first challenge of the month for the Daring Cardmakers is to use the flowers associated with that month as the inspiration for our cards.  August's flowers are Poppies and Gladioli and as it doesn't seem so long since I made a poppy for a card I thought I'd have a go at something using the Gladioli

 For my background:

I used Distress Inks and my ink blending tool/pads along with yellow, orange and a couple of pink shades directly on to the card blank

Swirls  Cuttlebug embossing folder on the right side of the card

Swirls then highlighted by swishing  the ink remaining on the (Fired Earth?) blending tool ink pad over the raised bits.

For the flowers I added extra punched and inked blossoms to some of the "Star Lily" stems I have in my (teeny weeny) flower collection.  I couldn't bear to cut any up to make the stems fuller, but fortunately my kikyou flower punch is exactly the same size as those on the stems. I added tiny gems to the centres and hand cut some leaves to add to the spray

The Vase:  I made a new vase shape and used my Craft Robo to cut 3 shapes from blue card. The first was glued onto the card and I added the flowers.  The other two were glued together to make a stronger piece for adding ink, Glossy Accents and some swirls of Glamour Dust, - at this point I left it to dry, then added another layer of Glossy Accents to seal in the glitter, plus 3 pink DewDrops (from Sarah's Cards) - I think blue or clear might have worked better, though.  Once dry I adhered the vase over the one already on the card.

The journal piece was pc generated, I added some gorgeous Creative Treasures lace down one edge, then added another piece of card to make the whole strip the same thickness. 

I tied a bow with green seam binding (also Creative Treasures) around the lower edge

A plaited length of pink button twine (The Ribbon Reel) was threaded through the loop and tied in a bow.

The strip was adhered in place and more pink DewDrops added on the lower edge

before adhering it to the side of the card

 As usual there are some really lovely ideas for using these flowers over on the Daring Cardmakers BLOG so please head over there to see them.  I hope you'll join in and play along with us.

That's all for today, I'm struggling to get things done this week and I have a bit of a list to get on with.  I think it's because I've had some really lousy wakeful nights - it makes it hard to settle down to things in the day time, doesn't it?

Anyway, fingers crossed things get better soon because I'm not a nice person when I'm lacking sleep!

Thanks for looking in today, please cheer me up by leaving a message :-)