Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there...including mine!

Happy Mother's Day to all of the Moms out there...including mine!  Now that Mother's Day is almost upon us, I think it's safe to share the Mother's Day card I sent to my Mom and to my husband's Mom as well.   Not that either of them read my blog but you never know, I would hate to ruin the surprise.

I bought the Build a Blossom set and punch when they were first available for demonstrators to preorder and can you believe that it took me until my April stamp club meeting to introduce them both to ink and cardstock?  Yes, shameful...I know!  but they are now well loved and I don't plan to stop using them now.

The two cards I'm sharing are very similar....I used a brad for the center of  the one up top, along with sponging some pink along the edges of the Framed Tulip embossing.  It accidentally got a smudge on it while I was stamping and rather than trying to remake the card ...well, why waste?  I just "fixed it" by sponging Melon Mambo all around the whole card.  I like sponging anyway, so why not? The flower  in the sample at the bottom has an Old Olive button for the center of the one below and no sponging.
     Both cards were done using Pretty in Pink cardstock stamped in Melon Mambo with the Build a Blossom stamp set, gives it a nice "two toned" look and I really liked it.  The leaves were Wild Wasabi stamped with Versamark and punched out, that is pretty much it.  Assembling the petals is really pretty easy...I got some tips from looking at various blogs online and sort of took bits and pieces of several of them to come up with this card....they all sort of merged together and while I got a lot of good tips from various sources, I think the card that inspired me most was one shared on a Splitcoast Stampers gallery done by kyann22, see below for a link to that card and thanks to everyone else who has shared ideas for using this particular stamp set.

     Back on track, to do the assembly of the flower, I followed the online tips and punched out a circle (one of the smaller sized ones, 1 1/4th inch will do) to use as a "base" for sticking down the big petals.  Any color is fine, it won't show once the card is done.  I found that I liked the uneven number of 5 petals better than a crowded 6 petal bloom. They say odd numbers are more natural so that's what I did...putting the petals so that the sides touched each other gave me the result  I preferred.  The tips kind of overlap in the center but I didn't like bare spaces in between the petals.

To get the second layer applied, I just stuck them right on top of the first layer centering them up on the larger petals and adhering them with dimensionals.   I used a bone folder to sort of curl them just a bit so they would look more natural....not sure what they will look like after surviving a  cross country trip in a clear envy but hopefully they were still presentable for my mom and MIL.  The Wild Wasabi leaves just tuck in under the petals wherever they seem to fit best and of course, the Mother Day sentiment is from All Holidays. Here is that link I promised  http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/1942848

My son's GF (an amazing artist who also enjoys stamping the occasional card) came to visit over Easter break and she had a few hours to kill between the time he had to go back and the time her ride was leaving so we forced ourselves to go downstairs and stamp a little bit, she had great ideas on arranging the flowers as she made a similar card for her  Mom then we did another card which I will share later.

In the meantime, Happy Mother's Day and God bless you to all the Moms out there. what would this world  be like without you??  Hope you all have a great day tomorrow!