Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Large Cut-Out Flowers...


This flower stamp is one of the newer stamps released from Penny Black early this year. I love to cut out big flowers and layer them onto cards - the cut-out petals give some extra pop! The card was made with a Spellbinders large die - to make a completely shaped card, I first score and fold a piece of cardstock in half - this is out of a white piece of cardstock, that you will not see from the front. I place the die so that the fold is slightly below the top edge of the cutting edge of the die. Now when I cut it out, the upper edge has the fold and the rest of the card is cut to the shape. The front of the card that you are seeing is a single cut of a pink cardstock that is layered to the top of the folding card. Before I attached it to the folded card, I stamped and embossed the same large flower image with white embossing powder. The white and purple strips running across the card are also cut with the die - so that that edges match perfectly. This can get a little tricky for this card, because you want the edges of the strips to be even but then you want to emboss the white piece with an embossing folder. The best way I have found to do this is to use SMALL quantities of removable tape. Once you run this through a die cutting machine, the pieces are harder to get apart, so be careful when separating them. Then you can emboss the white layer. the other option is to emboss the white piece before cutting, but it tends to destroy the embossed look when it goes through with the cutting die. Now it is just a layering game and you attach the flower and fluff out the petals!

Have a great day! Jeannette