Bouquet of Blooms 60th Card

On the last day of the year, I thought that I would share a card that I made a few months ago for a  lovely lady in our craft group for a very special birthday.

She didn't actually know that we were making cards for her and that's the best kind of surprise for a crafter, handmade and craft.......lots of craft in fact.

For my card, I started with an 8 x8 inch 300gsm white card base and chose the Dreamees sapphire dreams paper pad. One of my new pads to use and I know for a fact that I am not the only crafter that loves the smell of their new paper pads.....strange but very true.

The day before I started to make this card, I had a flower making day as flowers take me a little longer to make these days. As I hadn't quite decided on a plan for my card I decided to make a batch of flowers and just see how they turned out.

Using a mix of the sapphire dreams and plain cardstock I used the loops and lace flower dies to create my flowers, As I only had white pollen stamens, I used some of my Dreamees sparkle 2nd gen dinky inky reinker to colour them the shade that I wanted and added Dreamees 4mm pearls to the rest.

I had some french navy colour core card that I used to define the layers in my card and used the circle loops and lace doily die for the centre topper and one of the border dies in the oval set to make a ribbon band for my polka dot ribbon to sit on.

On a printed die cut piece of the backing paper from the paper pad, I stamped the recipe of a birthday sentiment and decided to have my flowers cascading around the topper. For the foliage, I used the dies from the embellishment set in the loops and lace collection and die cut the leave in silver satin board to tie in with the dimensional silver glittered 60 in the corner.

Fortunately, I did have just the right amount of flowers I needed for my card and if you are a few blooms short the rolled roses are always a good space filler and easy to make without a die. On these I added a little ink to the edges which gave them a little shimmer too as the Dreamees 2nd gen dinky inkies do just that, colour and shimmer perfectly.

I added a verse to my card and made a box, hoping it would withstand a trip in the post and by the look of it, it did which is always a relief when you make something.

To be fair the post are pretty good, I make a box and then wrap it in a layer of brown paper before sending and that seems to work pretty well and keeps the weight and price down as well as adding an extra layer for wear and tear.

I know there have been a lot of complaints about Royal Mail with the run up to Christmas but I think they have been doing an amazing job under extremely difficult circumstances, working silly hours which is easy to forget.

Enjoy your day whatever you are doing and best wishes for the New Year.

Happy Crafting