simple thank you! (japanese blossoms)

i was reading Dawn McVey's blog the other day, and came across this cool tip:

instead of stamping a text background onto cardstock, buy an old book at a thrift store and tear out the pages and punch/ cut accordingly.


so smart, right? i don't have any "text" backgrounds, and wouldn'tve used them often enough even if i had (that's about 3 more steps added to my card than i'd want to use), so i thought... that's a GREAT idea... thanks Dawn! well, i bought a book precisely for that purpose the other day at a local thriftstore for about $1.75 (it was a hardcover, but i wanted something OLD and with PLENTY of pages) and finally broke it out. i have these japanese blossom stamps that go perfectly along the elegant branch, but then i thought--"let's spruce this up *just* a bit."




as you can see in the above photos, there's a hint of dimension from the center of the blossoms. this is because of the book + a tiny flower punch. i went to a stamp show and saw a vendor demo-ing the punched flower technique where she put layer upon layer of different sized flowers to create a more "realistic" bloom. well, we all know it's a card, not a live flower, but why not add something extra to make it more special? so i pulled out the book, ripped a page (gasp! i never do that... oh wait, now i do), and punched some flowers. the cream cardstock and the book pages were EXACTLY the right color... no tinting necessary. sooo, i took my scoring/ embossing tool and rolled the tip in the center of the flower, added a gem, and stuck it onto the card.


VOILA! there you have some sweet flowers.


definitely going to try this again... especially on this flower stamp. easy-peasy, very pretty!


thanks for looking and all your sweet comments, they're so encouraging :D