Playing With Flowers

I really love that Kristina's new floral dies come with a plain background die to match the paper piecing front - it makes crafting with them so easy! So today I have 3 different cards using different techniques and styles because once I started I wanted to keep playing!!! I used the Spring Floral Die here but most of Kristina's dies of this type have the same plain background die included in the set.

I started with a standard die cut card but with a little twist taking the die "off the edge" so the front of the card is narrower than the back. This is an easy technique - just place the die over the edge of the card and use the partial diecutting technique (put the top plate ony over the bit you want to cut and not the whole die.)

used the background die to cut the cream base card then die cut the piecing layer from white card so I could colour it with markers. I think we naturally think colour for stamps and card for dies but that's not always the way to go. Here with some markers and easy shading I got a lovely realistic looking flower. 

I cut a white background, pieced it all together and then set it aside whilst I worked on the mixed media background. I used some washi tape to get some pattern, ripping it for a rough edge and then added a strip of yellow paper to match the bloom.  The sentiment comes from the new Concord and 9th Paper Posy Stamp and was stamped in Altenew Lemonade Stand Ink.

For the next cards I wanted to play with the inlay technique so didn't use the background die.  I cut two panels of blue card, one light one dark and die cut the detail die from both - making sure I had the flower in the exact same place on each panel (top tip - die cut one, then use the negative space to line the die up over panel 2)  I put a sheet of copy paper behind each to cut down on the thickness.

I then die cut just the flower from pink and peach and the leaves from two shades of green.  It was then simply a case of piecing them together - I put the pale blue outline into the dark blue negative space adding the pink flower and dark leaves and then did the opposite in the other.  The next step was to cut them up!  I cut a diagonal line across both pieced panels (hence the need for the accurate die placing in step 1) so I could then create two new mirror imaged panels for a fun twist on traditional die cutting.

I trimmed the panels slightly and popped them back onto a white base card before finishing them with the same sentiment set and stitched line details using Kristina's new stencil - one black, one white.

Hopefully that gives you some ideas how to twist up your die cutting!

Happy Crafting

Tara