Pleated Flower Cards

Here are two of the three cards I got done today…

As I was making these, we had a severe thunderstorm blow through. It was pretty dark and Amy came running to my craft corner hollering about a tornado right above the neighbor’s house! I knew it wasn’t so, but I went to check, “just in case.” Nope, just dark clouds indicative of an impending thunderstorm. As I looked, I could hear the next door neighbor’s 3 year old wailing about the “tornado” that was coming. So, I had to give the girls a bit of a talking to that they cannot scare the littler kids with all this tornado talk. (Actually it was the 3 year old’s brother who started the talk, but still, Amy definitely got caught up in it). I guess with all this wild weather and the news talking it up a storm, it’s no wonder the kids are a bit paranoid about tornadoes!

So, anyway,  I chose bright, summery colors to try this technique to offset the gloominess of the storm. Once the storm passed, it cleared up and it’s actually very pleasant out right now! Thankfully, it was pretty much over and done with when Steve was grilling our steaks for supper tonight.

Okay, enough blather…back to the cards. I was completely inspired by this tutorial on the newly discovered by me Cards blog. If you didn’t know, you can now order online copies of this neat magazine for a mere $5 an issue! Very cool!

The cards are very simple, but fun, I think. Let’s see if I can remember the supplies I used…LOL

On the first one, that’s Citrus Leaf cardstock, run through my Cuttlebug with a new polka dot embossing folder offered by QuicKutz. I rubbed a sponge with Citrus Leaf ink on it all over the embossing to give it a little extra oomph. The pattern paper is some old Doodlebug paper that I just love. It makes me happy looking at it. I sponged a bit of Bubblegum ink on the pattern paper. I added a Prima flower that came in a rather large container. The flowers were a free gift from Archiver’s on one of their make and take weekends. The button is one from the set I found at Walmart a year or so ago and I added some orange floss to finish it off. I wanted to add a little something else, and finally decided on the ric-rac. I tried making a stem and leaf, but it looked dorky to me, so I pulled it off.

The second card is also inspired by a card sample in the tutorial. I liked the three layers on the flower. The Orange cs and pattern paper worked great, but when it came to the narrower Bubblegum cardstock, I started having problems. I am NOT a math whiz by any means-and definitely have issues with spatial relations. I tried doing it the way the other strips were done and I kept getting a square. I’m sure there is some logical and mathematical reason for it, but I don’t know what it is. So I cut I don’t know how many strips, trying to get it to work and finally sort of got this one to look better than my previous attempts. By this time I was tired of trying and called it good. LOL The center is a flattened bead cap with a glittered brad on top. The leaf is hand cut with a scrap of glittered cardstock (DCWV) that was just laying on my table. Because it took so long to get that last strip done, I wanted to just be done with the card, and I scored the lines for interest and plunked the flower on it. Who knows, maybe another day I’ll be inspired to do something a bit “more” with it.

I’ve got one more card to share, but it’s totally different from these, so I’ll put it in its own post.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jeanne