Garden Gathering, Sunflower Embossing Folder, Birthday Card, Stampin' Up!

Hello and welcome to my blog. Today I have a fall birthday card to share with you. I had seen it on Pinterest a number of times and today I finally gave in and thought I'd give it a try. You can see the original card by clicking here.  Please read on to see how it was made.

The base of the card is a folded half-sheet of Granny Apple Green card stock. It opens on the right and the fold is on the left. I cut 4" x 5-1/4" piece of Basic White card stock and taped it to the inside.

I cut a second piece of Basic White card stock at 4-1/4" x 5-1/2".  I textured it using the "Sunflower" embossing folder. I thought it would be easy to color but it ended up being a bit more difficult. I started by coloring the sunflowers using the light Daffodil Delight Blends pen. Then I brought in the dark Daffodil Delight pen but it was a bit too dark for some odd reason. I ended up using the light Mango Melody (retired ) pen because it had just the right shading color for the inner parts of the petals. 

The center of the flowers were colored using both light and dark Pecan Pie pens. and the leaves were colored using both light and dark Granny Apple Green pens. It took a lot longer than I thought to color it all in. Trying to stay on top of the raised pieces and trying to get color in the indented parts. I much prefer the "Blackout" technique. It's where you color on the other side (the indented side) and then color over the piece using Basic Black ink. You can see a card I made using that technique by clicking here.  I kind of want to give it a try but I thought this took a lot more time than I wanted to spend so I think it will be put on the back burner for another time (maybe!).  But for now this is what I did and how it turned out. After coloring, I cut the piece in half at 2-1/8".  The piece measures 2-1/8" x 5-1/2".  I taped it to a piece of Pecan Pie that measures 2-3/8" x 5-1/2".

The original card adds the ribbon around the textured piece but I didn't pay attention and I had glued my sunflower piece to the Pecan Pie piece. I taped the edges of the ribbon (retired) around the back and then taped the strip to the front of the card about 1/4" from the fold. I took a piece of the ribbon and slipped it under the taped piece and tied a knot. I trimmed the ends and the bow was done.

The words are from the "Garden Gatherings" bundle using Basic Black ink on Basic White card stock. I cut them out on my paper cutter. Once cut it measures 2" x 11/16". It was taped to a piece of Pecan Pie card stock that was cut using the ribbon die in the "Stylish Shapes" set. I taped the words on top and added Dimensionals to the back and I set the piece in place on the front of the card about 1/8" from the right edge and 1-1/4" from the top edge. 

I used a few black dots from the adhesive-backed "Bats, Ghosts and Dots" package. I'm glad I'm able to find uses for those dots. I thought I'd end up with lots of them but I keep finding uses for them. 

I am okay with the way the card turned out. I say "okay" because I'm comparing it to the original card. I tell everyone not to compare and here I am doing it myself! Oh and I forgot to mention, this was a two for card. Once the sunflower piece was cut in half, I had two equal strips to make two cards!

Thank you SO very much for taking your time to stop in and see today's birthday card,
Wanda