Happy Mother's Day

Hi guys. First of all I just want to wish all you Mums out there a very happy Mother's Day.  I am lucky enough to still have my Mum around as some of you already know from reading previous posts.  So today I thought I would share with you half of the card that I made her this year.  Yes I did say 'half'!  I made Mum a concertina card and for you to see it all properly it would be a mega long post so I thought it would be easier to show you half of it today and the other half tomorrow.  I have got to admit that I am not the quickest card maker in the world but this took me a week to make as I kept tearing it apart and starting it again where I just wasn't happy with it!

Anyway without further ado here is the box that I made to put it into.

I made the box from thick white card and then decorated the top of it to match the card inside.  The panels were stamped and decorated using stamps from my Fancy Flourishes stamp sheet and the top left panel was embossed using the Cuttlebug Stylized Flower embossing folder. The main panel was stamped using some of the elements from my Funky Flowers stamp sheet and then coloured using Copics and Sakura Stardust pens.  The 'Mum' wording was die cut using the Cuttlebug Curls 'n' Swirls alphabet.

Here is the first side of the card. To make the concertina card all I did was stick two 14.5x14.5cm square white cards together. This saves you buying a large piece of thick white card as doing it this way you can stick as many pieces together as you like and also makes it nice and sturdy.

Here's a better look at that first panel.  Again I have used flourishes from my stamp sheet to decorate the background panels and also that Stylized Flower embossing folder. For the main panel I cut a blossom nestabilities from white card and then stamped elements onto it from my Funky Flowers stamp sheet and just drew in the stems using a fine black pen.

Here's a better look at that centre panel.  The colouring was achieved by using light Copics first and then Sakura Stardust pens over the top along with a water brush.  This gives a delicate shimmery effect.  You can also see that I subtlety stamped the background of the die-cut using a flourish and a light blue chalk inkpad.

Onto the second panel now using the same two stamp sheets to create the background and also the daisy flower element. This time I chose to cut out the flowers after stamping them to use them as an accent.  To keep the flower theme going I also used my Martha Stewart Floral Lace edging punch too.  The stamped wording came from my Fancy Flourishes stamp sheet and the die-cuts were done using that Cuttlebug Curls 'n' Swirls alphabet.

And here is that third panel which I did to match the first one but just changed the panels around.  Again I stamped the elements from the Funky Flowers stamp sheet onto my blossom nestabilities die-cut to create my main panel and stamped out extra flower heads which I cut out to use as embellishments.

Here's another close up for you so you can see that I achieved this layout by doing some simple masking of the large central flower.  This is what I had in mind when I first designed the Funky Flowers stamp sheet as I thought it would be great fun to be able to stamp your own designs to fit perfectly into all the different nestabilities dies.

Thankfully after all that work my Mum did like the card!  Tomorrow I will show you the other side of it.

All the materials used on this card can be purchased from The Craft Barn.