Spring is almost here!

At least I hope so! The past few days we have had lovely warm weather, which has put me in the mood to make some bright and cheerful cards.

Instead of using patterned paper I made my own background paper, using Impression Obsession Cover-a-Card stamps. These were done with the paisley stamp. The flowers are cut from Papertrey felt using a set of their dies. I wish I had thought to take photos before I assembled the cards because I sewed the flowers together with the baker’s twine and tied the button on top to hold it all together. I didn’t have a needle that the twine would fit through, so I used my Crop-a-Dile and punched two holes through all of the flowers at once. I threaded the twine through the holes and up through the button, tied a knot and Voila! On the second one, I added a circle of cardstock on the bottom of the flower to make it easier to adhere to the card. I used Glue Dots to attach the flowers to the cards.

Now, check out these fabulous flowers!

I bet you can’t guess what I used to make these flowers. No peeking.

Give up?

Mini cupcake liners! Yes, really! I KNOW! How cool is that??

They started out as ordinary, everyday mini cupcake liners….

and ended up like this…

Here’s how I did it. First, a disclaimer…I did not come up with this wonderful idea on my own. Surprised? No, I didn’t think so. Anyway, I saw one on a card somewhere online and had to try it. The cupcake liners are so inexpensive - $1.99 for 100 and you can find them at a party supply store, craft store, or even the grocery store. I only use 3 or 4 liners for each flower, so that’s a lot of flowers for 2 bucks!

Here’s how I make them (click on any of the photos to see them larger):

Separate the liners first or you will have a hard time getting them apart once they are cut. Stack them loosely and cut just up to the bottom, through all of the layers at once. 10 or 12 snips should be enough, depending on how wide you want the petals to be. Don’t worry about getting the cuts evenly spaced, it really doesn’t matter.

Separate them and flatten them just a little bit.

Apply some glue to the middle of one of your layers. I use Tombow Mono Multi glue and it works well for me…use whatever you have.

   

Attach one of the liners, being sure to offset the petals just a bit. Apply glue to the middle of that one and attach another liner, offsetting the petals again. Repeat as needed. I find that 4 is usually sufficient, all of these only have 3 layers.

I punched out a scalloped circle from some Bazzill embossed card stock for the center of the flowers. You could also just use plain card stock, or run some through the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder.

A white card stock circle to go in the center of the pink one.

Thread a button with some pretty baker’s twine, ribbon, or embroidery thread and attach to the center using a Glue Dot. I used baker’s twine.

There you go – one gorgeous flower! I used the Mono Multi glue to attach the centers and attached a circle of card stock to the back of the flower to stabilize it a little, too.

 

A couple of variations:

Purple, of course!

A sunflower. The center was cut with the smallest scalloped circle Nestability and run through the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder.

Here’s my little stash of baker’s twine. I don’t remember where I got it, but you can get some online at The Twinery. It is wonderful stuff. The have full rolls or you can get a sampler package, which is what I have. I love this stuff!

  

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you are having a wonderful week!