H2H - 4 Seasons Card

It's a sketch challenge this week at Heart 2 Heart. I used the sketch as my starting point, but I did modify it a bit.

 I came up with the idea of using the Trees & Things Stamp Set to make a little scene in one of the panels. The set comes with a ton of cute tree accessories, and I couldn't decide which season to do.  The sketch features 4 panels, and seemed like a perfect fit (excuse?) to do all 4 seasons.

The basic colors are Clover Meadow, Chocolate, Tulip, and Sunflower. I attached the Spring and Summer panels with foam tape. This helped since they didn't lay exactly flat because of the brads I used as blossoms and apples.

In the Winter scene I used some Glitz Glitter Glue to simulate snow on the branches.

The set comes with two leaf arrangements - one full of leaves and one a little more sparse. There's also an individual leaf stamp that helped me add a few leaves to Spring and Fall to get just the look I wanted.

I really adore this stamp set. It's one of the more 'fun' sets to create with. On a side note, this is my last week as Guest DT. It was a lot of fun and a real honor. Thanks Mary & the Design Team for sharing such great ideas week after week. And a special thanks to all those of you who take the time to leave comments when you visit.  I know it's easier to just click right along to your next stop, but the time you take to say a few words is truly appreciated.

H2H - My Favorite Technique

Over at Heart 2 Heart this week we're supposed to share our favorite technique.  And after thinking about it...I have no idea what my favorite technique is!  There's so many great ones - stamping techniques, paper folding, layout ideas - there's no way I could choose one as my favorite.  Really, my favorite thing is trying out something I haven't done before.  So that's what I've decided to share today - something new that I tried on a layout just recently.

Close To My Heart has some really amazing patterned papers and there are times that I find it difficult to plop pictures down on top of it!  The paper is so pretty and it's a shame to cover it up with photos and embellishments.  That's what happened to me with this paper from the Sweetheart Paper Pack.

 

Put the photo down on top of it, and you lose the wonderful look of the paper.

I decided to fix this by using a technique I'm calling the "making the background the foreground" technique.  Here's how.

I wanted to place my photo on the right edge of my paper.  I turned the patterned paper over and placed the photo where I would want it, but touching the left edge since I'm working on the back side.  In pencil, I drew a line along the bottom edge of the photo and along the right edge.

The pencil lines cut across some of the main heart images of the paper, which correspond precisely to the images on the front of the paper.  Using an X-acto knife, I traced the outline of any images that would be underneath the photo and touched one of the pencil lines.  Don't make any cuts outside the pencil lines, though...only make cuts connected to the pencil lines that are within the photo area.  The picture below has the photo attached to the front side so you can more clearly see where my cuts were.

Now turn the paper over and tuck your photo behind the cut out images, letting them lay in front of the photo.  I added a title and that was all the extra embellishment I thought this layout needed.  The garden of heart flowers still looks super cute and shares the stage with my photo.  I'm so happy with how this turned out!

Dragonfly Mother's Day Card

I made this card for my Mom for Mother's Day.  She's a quilter, and a fan of dragonflies.  This card sort of incorporates the two.  The dragonfly was cut from the Stamping Cricut cartridge.  To give it a "quilty" sort of feel, I added the stitches around the edges with marker.  Behind the cut-out, I used a technique called "Iris Folding", where you layer strips of folded paper working from the edges of the design into the center.  It sort of gives the paper a quilted look.

You can find out the details of this technique at the bottom of this post.  Layering all that folded paper does add a little bulk, but not as much as I feared.  I covered the back side (which is on the inside of the card) with the butterfly B&T paper from the Wings Paper Pack.  I think the "busy"ness of the paper conceals the thickness of those folds really well.  You don't even notice it!

To finish off the front, I made an accordian flower and paired it with some Just Blooms flowers.  The tag is something I created using the Unity stamp set for the background and the Tiny Typewriter alphabet to write "Mom".

I wasn't a huge fan of the Wings paper before this, but the green and black seemed perfect for this card. 

Edited to add:  Paper Cutz Challenge link & H2H link.

Info on the Iris Folding Technique follows.