Thanks

Yesterday you didn't hear from me because I spent the day paper piecing, fussy cutting, and distressing.  (Really, this girl's favorite thing to do.)  I am always in need of cards.   I took the day yesterday creating one card that could be used in many, many ways.  I went to my favorite go-to pattern in Wishes (All Squared Up - page 101), and I created two dozen of these cards.  Many of them are flat, and then some one them are dimensional like this one.

The paper you are looking at is Stella.  There are several unique colors in this paper packet - Olive, Lagoon, Sunset, Cocoa.  Colors I would have not put together myself, but go beautifully together!   The stamp set that I used for the flower and leaves is Just For You.

I wanted to show you the set so that you can see exactly how I used it.  First of all, do you see the dimensions written by a couple of the images?  That means that is the size you cut the matching die-cuts from the Cricut Art Philosophy collection.  Close To My Heart has made it easy, haven't they?  I cut the large flower on the sunset print from the paper packet.  I used the "snakeskin" print to cut circles for the center of the flower.  From there, it was easy to stamp the images using cocoa ink.  I took one of the petals and stamped the back side of two of the printed papers I wanted to use.  Then I stamped the leaves onto the snakeskin paper.  After I fussy cut the petals 144 of them!) and leaves (96 of these!), then I distressed everything with cocoa ink.  As you can see, I alternately pieced the petals into the flower.  For this card, I used a bit of cocoa ribbon underneath the popped up center square.  I also popped up the center and added some Mocha Gems.  I " stamped this one with "thanks," but it's easy enough to add any sentiment to the other cards I made.

So there's a little lesson in bulk card making.  It didn't really take all day.  I'd say it took about 3 hours to make two dozen of these cards.  Pop a movie into your laptop and time goes quickly!