How to make your own flower embellishments

How about some links that show you how to make your own flowered embellishments? Interested? Then keep reading : )

Some of the best tutorials on making paper flowers for cards are on the blog Mainly Flowers, you are not going to believe the flowers this lady makes. Start with the "No Tools Lily," she has templates for leaves and petals, and a number of no tool flowers you can make (and they are amazing!) For the flowers she makes using specific tools, she even has a post on substitute tools you can use . Make sure you book mark her site because she has some great ideas and techniques. And her cards are just beautiful.

Want to make your own flowered embellishments for your cards with a computer? Visit this neat site, Little Big Tree, and download their free Demo software. Really cool images in the Demo, and you get an idea of how you can use their program to make some home made wonderful flower embellishments. The program allows you to change the size, color, hue and more of the image, you will have a ball printing out their Demo stuff, I am seriously thinking of ordering the program so I can have all of the images : )

You can also use your punches to create flowers, check out Scrap Jazz for some inspiration, and also take a peek at Lauren M's blog, she takes you step by step on how to make some amazing flowers, and also features a link to a book on making flower embellishments.

One last idea: If you have shopped at the dollar store you know they carry silk flowers. You can purchase a few of them and then separate the flowers from the stems, use the flowers on the card. You will also be surprised at how many flowers you get for a dollar. Add a "center" with a bead, a button, jewel, use your imagination and explore all the possibilities.

I will keep searching for the other sites, but the links provided tonight should give you a good start. If you have a technique for making flowers, or a link to a good tutorial, please leave a comment and I will update this post.

Have a great Monday (tomorrow there will be little time for stamping around here...sigh), and stamp a few for me : )

SBS Challenges, are you as addicted to them as I am?

Hi all, hope you are enjoying your day. I am still in my robe, and should have learned that stamping before showering is a no no....sigh. Anyhow, since I am here, might as well finish this post.

SplitCoastStampers is a great site for anyone who loves to stamp, and one of my favorite things on their site is the daily challenge. Monday they post a "Try a new technique" challenge, and I actually finished the challenge in a day (a new record I think.) Yesterday's challenge was called the "Whole Enchilada," you had to create three 3 x 3 cards (they are such fun to work with), envelopes for the cards (they had a template posted) and a box to hold them all (template provided). So here is my submission:

This is the box I made for the cards, stamped a background swirl with the same color green as the card stock, then went back over the swirls with a glitter pen (the one I bought on Saturday, glad I bought six of them because I can tell I will be using them a whole lot).
I also used my cuttlebug to cut out the flower and leaf images (the flower and leaf are two die sets, one for the solid cut and another for the outlined overlay). I also added some 3D crystal lacquer to the flowers for an added pop.

Here are the cards I made, same techniques and made the envelopes out of white paper (not card stock) and stamped the coordinating color background image, and yes, highlighted with glitter : )

Here is everything together again, from a different angle, this was a fun challenge! Loved it and now am off to try the challenge for today (color challenge).

What I love about the challenges is that you learn so much and try things you might not have tried before. Do you have a past favorite challenge? Do you do other challenges? What are your favorite blogs for challenges? My personal favorite challenge is the Sketches Challenge posted on Wednesdays : )

Ok, now off to shower, make the bed, eat lunch and make some more cards. Happy Tuesday!