An Abundance of Flowers

I was asked to create a 30th-anniversary card, and wanted to combine it with this week's challenge over at Freshly Made Sketches.

This is what I made:

I loved the wavy centre of the sketch and thought it would work well with flowers running down either side.

I started off by stamping Altenew's Bride to Be flowers stamps in many colours. I used the following three sets to get a mixture of colours:

• Tea Party - Vineyard Berry, Heart Beat, Coral Bliss & Pink Pearl

• Golden Sunset - Marigold, Snapdragon, Chamomile, Sunray

• Warm Gray - Lava Rock, Moon Rock, Evening Gray, Morning Frost

Because the flowers are so beautiful, the card does not need much else added, so it's really just about playing with the different layers to create lots of different colourways.

I followed the sketch by cutting the central wavy panel out of the front of some white card. This leaves you with two pieces of card that are not joined, so I created the 'false' front panel by adding some acetate behind it. Behind the acetate, I stuck a strip of coral cardstock. I then stuck the entire panel onto the front of a white card base. If I was making this again, I would not create such a thick panel. To counteract the weight of the front of the card though I simply added a yellow rectangle of card inside the card to balance it out.

I used one of Altenew's masterclass tips where I played around with the positioning of the flowers and then stuck some washi tape strips over all of them to create one piece, that I could then flip over to add the pop dots for dimension. This saves LOADS of time. I stuck the two floral panels down either side of the wavy strip and added a few more elements to the card base to create a bit more interest.

As the 30th wedding anniversary is Pearl, I thought I would add a few tiny pearls to the centre of each of the star-shaped flowers. I stamped the sentiment onto a banner using a really old Papertrey Ink set that I can't remember the name of (Sorry!) If I come across it again, I will edit this post.

To finish I added the number 30 in the top right-hand corner that I cut out using Tim Holtz Thinlits abc, and a bit of Wink of Stellar to the 30 and the centre of some of the flowers.

This card definitely took longer than I thought it would on the stamping front. I think it would be great to stamp and die cut some flowers in advance while listening to an audiobook or something. They take time to do but they are very satisfying and I'm really pleased with how quickly the card comes together.

Until next time ... Thanks for popping by!