Birthday Blossoms Larkspur and Waterlily to Celebrate July Birthdays

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Hi Everyone, The two birth flowers for July are both relatively unusual, certainly in crafting terms, meaning that there is not an abundance of larkspur and waterlily craft supplies available, however,  I found a lovely

Hi Everyone,
The two birth flowers for July are both relatively unusual, certainly in crafting terms, meaning that there is not an abundance of larkspur and waterlily craft supplies available, however,  I found a lovely waterlily die cutting set from Heartfelt Creations which I used for the first card and a larkspur stamp and die set which I used for the second one.

I have been meaning to have a go at making an easel card for a while and this card seemed like the perfect opportunity, using the die cut waterlily as the ‘prop’ for the upright part of the card.

Hand made easel birthday card with die cut waterlilies and dragonflies

There are three main elements to this card so I have split them up so you don’t have to read the whole thing if you are only interested in part of it.

Card Base
I cut two pieces of blue card for the base, one measuring 12 x 24cm and another 12 x 12cm. I scored the longer piece at 12 and 18cm and folded the card on both these score lines to form the base.  I forgot to photograph the base at this stage to show you how it is folded, so I have borrowed this photo from Pinterest. This shows the base with the smaller piece of card attached, but I didn’t attach mine straight away as it was easier to make most of it first. You can make the card any size you want the main principle is that the longer piece of card is scored at the half way and three quarters marks and folded to make the support for the upright part of the card.

How to make and easel card
I cut two pieces of white card 11.5 x 11.5cm sq and used Broken China and Old Paper distress ink pads to color them. I wanted the card to look like a lily pond with sky above so I used Broken China all over the card and added Old Paper to the area that would be the pond to give it a greenish hue.
Waterlily Flowers and Lily Pads
The gorgeous lilies and lily pads are all die cut using the Heartfelt Creations Waterlily and Frog die cutting set. Waterlilies can be both white and pink so I chose pink card for mine. Once cut, I inked the edges of the petals with pink ink, then pinched them to almost fold them in half and curled the ends over. There are two sizes of flowers in the die set so I cut one of the bigger ones and a few of the smaller ones, each one has self adhesive pearls on the center for the stamen. The lily pads (or leaves) are cut from green card and the edges inked with a slightly darker shade of green.
The dies cut a range of sizes of petals which you can combine in any way you like.
Dragonflies
I have been wanting to use this lovely dragonfly die cutter for a while, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
Die cut dragonfly close up
The die set cuts a whole dragonfly as well as a separate set of wings and a separate body. I wanted to make the dragonflies look as realistic as possible so I cut a whole body from green mirror card, and two further sets of wings one from blue card and one from acetate. I covered the acetate ones with clear Wink of Stella to give them a bit of sparkle. I glued the blue wings underneath the green body so that they show through the green wings and the acetate wings over the green body to give the iridescent shimmer. I bent the green and acetate wings up slightly so that they were raised from the background. I am very pleased with the way they worked out.
The final step was to make the greeting and assemble the card. For the greeting, I inked a small piece of card to match the colors of the pond area of the background, stamped the message in Stormy Sky distress ink and also used that to ink the edges.
hand made waterlily and dragonfly gift tag
I had a couple of lilies left over so I used them to make a matching gift tag. I thought the die cut dragonfly would be a bit big for the tag so I stamped one using the dragonfly stamp from the Cardio Dragonfly Garden stamp set. I stamped it in Broken China distress ink and heat embossed it with clear crystal powder so that it had a little bit of sparkle.
I’m pleased with the results! The easel part was very easy and the card looks just the way I wanted it to.
Materials used:
Hand made birthday card with water color background and emboss resist larkspur

I wanted to do something different  this time so chose to emboss resist with the larkspur stamp on a watercolour style background.

I stamped the larkspur flowers onto watercolor paper with watermark ink and heat embossed with opaque white embossing powder.

Working on a craft mat I spread some Dusty Concord distress ink and spritzed it with a tiny bit of water, using a 1.5cm wide paint brush I painted a strip of purple across the top of the stamped image. I then added a bit more water to the ink to lighten the color and painted a second strip and repeated this until the flowers part of the stamp was covered. I repeated the process with Old Paper distress ink over the leafy area at the bottom of the flower. Once the ‘paint’ was dry I wiped over the stamped image with a cloth to remove any ink from the embossed areas.

I trimmed the watercolor paper to 8.8cm and scruffed the edges, then mounted this on a 9.2cm square piece of lilac card and in turn mounted this in the centre of a 12.5cm sq white card blank.

The greeting is stamped in black at the bottom right corner of the card blank.

It was nice to do something different, I love the watercolor effect of the background.

Materials used:

Thank you for visiting, I have thoroughly enjoyed making all these cards, I hope you like them too, please leave me a comment to let me know what you think or if you have a question to ask.
Debbie x

4 thoughts on “Birthday Blossoms Larkspur and Waterlily to Celebrate July Birthdays”

  1. Hello Deb!
    Omg! Just saw your mail! And visited here:)
    Love your beautiful easel card. The lilies with dragonflies are super cute and love the tag too! And other creations are so pretty!

    Reply

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