Bloomin' Love - not just for Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! Hope your other halves have been sweet to you, if you go in for that kind of thing. Mr B has gifted me a single red rose, thoughtfully accented with a diamante rhinestone. And some booze. Dead, dead classy, we are :)

If you've bought the Bloomin' Love stamp set, don't consign it to the shelf now that Valentine's Day has passed. It contains lots of lovely delicate floral images perfect for other occassions. You only need to add a suitable sentiment.

For this quick and easy birthday card I've repeat stamped the small flower spray and the longer leafy bough stamps in Blushing Bride and Sahara Sand. I've stamped them into a loose right angle shape. I've also stamped and die cut three small flowers and stamped the banner & backed it with Blushing Bride glimmer card. The Happy Birthday sentiment is from the Teeny Tiny Sentiments stamp set.

Then I've glued the three die cut flowers over the stamped background, tied some linen thread and popped the banner up on 3d foam. The card is backed with some coordinating paper from the Love Blossoms DSP stack and layered onto a card blank.

Complete the card by carrying on the theme on the inside of the card too. 

Here's what I used. If you fancy buying the stamps, you can also buy the coordinating dies as a bundle and save 15% - click on the bundle link at the end of the slide show. And remember that until the end of March you can receive free products from the Sale-a-bration catalogue with every £45 spend.

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Sale-A-Bration 2016: Flowering Fields

We're nearly half way through Sale-a-Bration 2016, and I wanted to show you what I think will turn out to be the most versatile of the stamp sets you can get for free with each £45 spend.

Flowering Fields (#141303) is one of this year's great free Sale-A-Bration offerings. It has lovely clean lines and is great for colouring in. You might be tempted to stamp the flowers all in a row for a botanical guidebook feel, and they work very well that way. Or cluster them together for a wildflower garden effect. Check out Pinterest for oodles of ideas on how to use them.

For today's card I want to show how they can be used to form backgrounds, rather than being the focal point of a card.  I've repeat stamped a single image (top row, middle stamp) to draw the eye in towards the centre of the card.

As you can see, I repeat stamped the leaf image in the top left and bottom right corners of the cardtstock, making sure that I tapered them off as I got towards the middle of the card. (You're aiming to fill in a rough triangle shaped space with your stamping).

I coloured my leaves in with alcohol markers, using two tones that match Mossy Meadow, the green cardstock I used.

I also stamped the little heart shaped petals from the Bloomin' Love stamp set, in Rose Red ink in among the green leaves.

The flower cluster behind the sentiment is also from the Bloomin' Love set. It matches this flower from the Love Blossoms DSP pack:

I inked up the whole stamp with a Rose Red ink pad, the carefully wiped off the ink from the leaves and coloured them in with a Mossy Meadow green marker. I stamped it once onto the label, inked it up the same way and stamped again, slight twisting and overlapping the two images - the banner sentiment (also from Bloomin' Love) then covers up the join.

The label is finished off with some silver twine and a pink flower cut from the Bloomin' Heart framelits. 

It's a nice, crisp card you can adapt for any occasion. 

Remember, the Flowering Fields stamp set is free when you spend over £45 during Sale-A-Bration. You can place a qualifying order by clicking on the products I used, below.

 

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That's me in the corner...

Thrilled that my Valentine's Treat Bag made it onto the front page of the Stampin' Up! US website, and then onto the telly in Utah! Follow this link to get  a fleeting glimpse at 3.28 - bottom right of the screen. (Stampin' Up! are based in Utah, so it's not quite as random as it seems.)

Pop Up Valentine #2

Two Bloomin' Hearts pop-up Valentine cards in 2 days! It's an all out, Bloomin' Hearts, pop-up Valentine card frenzy!!

I made this card using the Bloomin Hearts thinlit dies and Bloomin' Love stamp set. I used pretty much the same principle as with yesterday's card - score your base card, position the heart die about .5" from the score line & don't completely cover it with the top cutting plate, so that the heart remains attached at the base point.

Flip the card over and repeat on the opposite side of the card. Lift up the two part cut hearts & glue them to each other at the top with a couple of glue dots. Decorate with a sentiment and cut a slightly larger backing card in black. Attach the black backing card & cut a couple more hearts in Real Red. Glue them into the gap left by the popped up hearts (cut off the very bottoms off where the popped up hearts are still attached). And you're done!

Here's what I used - click on anything to buy.

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Pop up Valentine #1

Here's a crisp and clean pop up Valentine card made with the new Bloomin' Love bundle - a die set and a coordinating set of stamps (buy as a bundle rather than individually & save 15%). The die reminded me of the lovely white laser cut cards you can buy so I thought I have a go at making my own.

I took a piece of Whisper White Thick card and folded it down the middle to make a 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" card. 

I positioned the floral heart die on it with the bottom point about half an inch from the score line. For running it through the Big Shot, I placed the top cutting pad so that it didn't cover the very bottom point of the heart. I really need to buy new cutting pads, don't I?

This is so that it doesn't cut that part out and the bottom remains attached to the base of the card & helps hold it in place - look carefully at the photo & you'll see.

Gently push the part cut heart up so that it's perpendicular to the opposite side of the card. Punch a piece of Whisper White with the Word Window punch (or cut a narrow strip about 1.5" x .25"). Crease at about .25" on each end & fold. Glue one end to the back of the large flower in the centre of the heart. Cut a thin slot in the base card, roughly behind where the flower will appear when popped up & feed the strip of card through & glue to the back.
 

This is what it should look like when secured. And that's the pop up stuff done - the rest is all decoration.

I glued a piece of Whisper White card behind the space where the white heart  had been cut from. Then I cut another heart in Real Red cardstock, flipped it over so that the reverse was upward, cut the very bottom point off (as that's where the white heart remains attached to the card) and glued it into the empty space. It will fit snugly, like a jigsaw piece. 

Then I stamped and die cut various elements from the stamp set and arranged them on the heart. The flower centres are cut from silver glimmer paper and I looped some silver thread at the back.

To back the card, I cut a piece of Real Red cardstock slightly larger than the card base and carefully stuck the card base inside with tape. 

I ran a peice of taffeta ribbon round the inside of the card and secured it on the outside with tape, then placed a stamped die cut over the join and finished with a hand tied taffeta bow.

I added a stamped die cut to the back of the card, to write a message. I've kept it small as I do not go in for sloppy smoochy kissy wissy messages. Me & Mr B have been together 28 years and so a brisk and efficient indication of general goodwill is all that is required. Otherwise he starts getting "ideas".

So that's how you can use the Bloomin' Hearts thinlit dies and Bloomin' Love stamps to make a pop up Valentine! I think it would also look really good as a wedding card, all in white. I'll have a go at that this week.

I'll have another pop up card using the Bloomin' Hearts die for you tomorrow, so do come back & check.

And if you want to make this yourself, here's what I used:

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Vintage Valentine

 

I love shabby chic so I was pleased to see the Bloomin' Hearts Thinlit dies in the Spring/Summer catalogue, as they work really well with this style. I used them here to cut the large text heart background and the small flowers on this Valentine card. What you maybe can't see at first glance is that it's a flip (or swing) card.

The card has a linen thread closure (glued under the crochet trim & flowers) and when opened, the heart flips round to reveal a simple, understated sentiment.

I used the coordinating Bloomin' Love stamp set to stamp flowers and leaves in Sahara Sand ink (2nd impression - stamp off onto scrap paper for the first) randomly on the card and on the edges of the cream heart (cut using the heart from the Treat Bag Thinlits dies, but any medium size heart shape die will do).

 

The sentiment in red ink is from a stamp set called What I Love (#141276), and it's a Sale-a-Bration set. This means it's free if you spend over £45. To give you an idea how this works, you could buy the Bloomin Love die and stamp bundle (£31.25),  the Venetian Crochet Trim (£6.50), Linen Thread (£4.25) and the Sahara Sand ink pad (£6). This would add up to £48 and you could then choose the What I Love Stamp set as your free Sale-a-Bration item. 

The "Know what I love?" stamp is actually all one line, but even at its widest point my heart die was too narrow to fit it all on. Since the stamp is photopolymer (clear) if you're feeling ruthless you could snip it in two, in the gap between the "what" and "I". I could never bring myself to do such a thing though, so to get it to span 2 lines I masked off "I love?" with washi tape and inked & stamped "Know what". Then I cleaned the stamp and masked off "Know what" and inked up "I love?" and stamped it underneath. 

To make the card I used Kraft cardstock and used the large Framelit from the Project Life Cards and Labels Framlits to cut a 4"x6" card base. I scored along the long length at 2" and at 2 3/4". Then I layed the heart die with the centre point over the first score line, and ran it part waay through a die cutting machine so that just the first and last part of the heart cut. You can see the principle in this card and you should be left with a card base that looks like this - ready to decorate! (The closed size of the card is 4"x4 1/2".)

 Here's what I used:

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