Sunflower Mother's Day

One of my creative, card-making friends had a great idea this Mother's Day - let's make each other cards for our husbands to use! This was such a fun project to work on. Since we both love sunflowers I decided to take out my BotaniCuts Sunflower dies from The Greetery. Using tips from Betsy Veldman and Kay Miller, I diecut the pieces using watercolour paper and then painted them up with distress oxide inks.

The petal layers are a mix of fossilized amber + wild honey + dried marigold + ripe persimmon distress oxide ink. The centres are painted with black soot distress ink and the leaves are a mix of bundled sage + peeled paint. I used Dawn McVey's handy formula from a recent TGIF Friday post on The Greetery to use a background (I used Windowpane Plaid) + a big focal point (I used BotaniCuts Sunflowers) + an eye-catching sentiment (Written in Ribbons) + a simple dicut to separate the focal items from the background (I used a Postal Frames die).

I stenciled a Flappable gingham pattern onto the flap of my envelope using evergreen bough distress oxide ink and then used some stamps from the Pretty Postmarks set on the front of the envelope.

I had one small sunflower put together that didn't fit on my card and as I was staging these photos I got the idea to attach it to the gingham flap!

Paper: Coldpress Watercolour paper (Canson); Solar White (Neenah)
Ink: Fossilized Amber, Wild Honey, Dried Marigold, Ripe Persimmon, Bundled Sage, Peeled Paint, Evergreen Bough distress oxide; Black Soot distress ink (Tim Holtz)
Stamps: Happy (Studio Katia); Pretty Postmarks, Written in Ribbons, Windowpane Plaid (The Greetery)
Dies: Written in Ribbons, BotaniCuts Sunflower, Postal Frames (The Greetery)