Happy Birthday with Alium Flowers

Do you have design papers laying around where you don't know what to do with? They are so pretty, but they don't work on pages or hard to use on cards too? Well, I had like three sheets of a wonderful botanical flower garden that I love, but it was one of these kinds....so pretty, but what to do with them? 

Not good for a scrapbook page. Cutting them up to use as background on cards wouldn't work either, since I might cut the flowers in half or risk to have to much scrap material. So what to do? 

While I was playing around with my new Anna Griffin embossing folders I had an idea: "Why not cutting each of these beautiful flowers out and use them individually on my cards....perfect! Out comes the craft knife and in no time all flowers were cut out including the little critters. Since I planed to used them in my card class, I encountered another problem. I don't have enough flowers to make one card for all, so everyone of my ladies had to deal with different flower type (you will see more in the next few days). Some of the flowers were running of the edge of the paper, so they had a little flat leave on one side, but that's not a problem. You just place the this flower either to the right or left of your card to make it flush with the edge...this makes for some need designs and it was fun in class. Everyone got to play around with the items given before adhering them.

The base for all this cards is 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" colonial white cardstock. I run a piece of the same cardstock (5 1/4"x 4") through the embossing machine. Two strips of green cardstock were embossed with a matching design folder. The tag was cut out with Spellbinders in two sizes, the bigger one in green, the smaller one in white. We stamped a sentiment on the white tag and adhered it to the green.   


All flower cards are assembled in this way: Adhere white embossed cardstock in the center of the base. Adhere green strip to the left side about 1/2" off the edge. The second green strip is adhered at the bottom also about 1/2" of the edge. All strips are only as long as the white embossing piece. In some cards we adhered the second strip over the flower, depending on the layout preference. 
The flowers are adhered with foam dots, but not your regular once. These are special once that are thinner so the piece is not getting to bulky. Arrange and adhere tag piece. The little critters are also adhered with thin foam dots. A sparkle finishes the card of.

Stay tuned for more flowers cards to come....