A Flower Festival

Well, you know me - it doesn't take much of an excuse for me to add flowers to my cards and projects - so Lythan#s Daring Cardmakers theme for this week made me a very happy bunny :)

   

The theme is

flower festival

 There is going to be a flower festival at Lythan's church next week and everyone is working hard on their arrangements. 

So I would love to see a festival of flowers on your card - or if you have hay fever perhaps just one!

Have a look at the beauties the team have come up with this week HERE

 I knew exactly what sort of flower I was going to use on my card because I found THIS lovely video tutorial a couple of weeks back and have been saving it for the right occasion.  Lyth's challenge was just the job! Actually the difficult part was deciding what to do with it once it was made.

I don't have the punch used in the video but I do have a Punch Bunch one that also has 4 different sizes of petals.  To make my flower more peony-like I trimmed the pointy ends of the petals down with scissors.  Just out of interest (and because I had quite a lot of unused punchies, I made a second version without cutting the pointy ends off - you can see the difference on the close-up photo above

I made the flower with no thought as to what to do with it (nothing new there), and having sat looking at it for a while waiting for inspiration, in the end I fell back on a few current favourites: Stencilling with a Mmeory Box die, the gorgeous Memory Box swirl and the beautiful velvet  ric-rac that was part of a Christmas swap on the Charmed Cards and Craft forum
A couple of weeks ago I gave into temptation (thanks for that, Kaz) and bought a few Paper Artsy "Fresco Finish" paints, two of which I've used to stencil the background.  I know the stencilling is a bit "splodgy" and imperfect but I like the effect and the texture.  So there.  I painted the swirls and the tiny sentiment background too

 Materials and Tools

Smooth White 15cm sq card, with about 1.5cm removed from one side

Flower: pale pink Bazzill card, Versamagic Muted Mauve Chalk ink pad,

this VIDEO Tutorial

Paper Artsy "Fresco Finish" paints: Mermaid and Rose

Velvet ric-rac braid, Flat-backed Pearls, Decal sentiment

Punch Bunch 4-petal punch: Azalea Petals

Memory BoxDies: Elegant Scrollwork, Contempo Circles Border

Spellbinders Nesties: Labels 9

I've set the flower a little off the edge of the card, and left the swirls unglued at their larger ends to make them a bit more "fluid"

Somehow I don't think this will fit in an envelope though :).  Might be needing to make a box.  Or maybe I'll just keep it for my shelf.
The team have made some beautiful bloomers ;) this week, and I'm hoping there will be loads of lovely floral fancies linked up to our blog.

Thanks for looking, hope you like my card today