Handmade Blue Rose

Happy Saturday! Hope everyone is able to find some crafting time today! As promised last post, today's card is featuring the blue rose from March's Flower Tutorial.
( http://paperoasis.blogspot.com/2011/03/paper-roses-picture-tutorial.html ) Along with the rose I made some glittery flourishes for embellishments. I cut them out with my Baby Bug and the Home Accents cartridge, then added glue and glitter. They match the coppery glitter flourishes already printed on the right side of the paper.
The paper is from the DCWV the Mariposa stack. I love all the butterfly images in it and have plans to use it in several cards.

 

The dimensional butterfly on the card is cut from one of the sheets. I added some pearls for the body and coppery wire for the antenna. Curled the wings and painted on a very light coat of pearl acrylics for extra shimmer.

The lovely quote is from Edmund Spenser: "Joy may you have and gentle hearts content." I wish the same for all of you and thank you for visting Paper Oasis!

Cindy

Traveling Birds

Happy Easter everyone! I haven't posted for a while, I've been making cards. :) I've been wanting to use the paper roses from the rose tutorial posted in March.  The card I came up with for the red rose is below. The striped paper, birds and butterfly were all cut from the 12" x 12" DCWV "The Botanicals Stack". I love the images and designs in this paper stack. If you haven't seen it, you must check it out next time you're craft shopping.

Originally the birds were in a different cage. It took up too much space and was three-dimensional looking, showing the top and side of the cage which wasn't working for this card. So I cut away the top and side and used Cricut and the Serenade cartridge to die cut a different cage and put the birds in (behind) it. 

I cut the birdcage from black card stock and put a clear glitter on it which gave it a sort of green hue. The birds were already glittery (which is making it hard for me to get a good photo). I also added a little of the same glitter to the red rose. 

For the sentiment I used a quote from the little vellum quote pads sold at Joann's. I put the quote on top of a vintage postcard scrap from my stash. I thought the quote was perfect because it looks like the butterfly is taking the birds on a site seeing trip!  Oh, and I made little antenna for the butterfly from craft wire. Next post, I will show you the card I made using the blue rose from the tutorial.

On a totally different note, I thought some of you might be interested in a diet site I recently joined. It's called Fat Secret http://www.fatsecret.com  (I'm not in anyway connected to this site except as a member.) It is totally free and IMO the best diet site on the web! You can follow the diet of your choice, Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, Calorie Count, and many others. Or you can follow your own plan. It has the best food database and nutritional information I've found anywhere online. You choose what you ate from the database and enter it into your food diary with a click. It keeps track of your fat, carbs, and protein grams, calories, etc. There are forums, challenges, buddies, recipes and just lots of community support. I'm "Cindy 23" on the site if you want to look me up. (BTW, the 23 refers to how many pounds I want to lose this summer- not my age- LOL I wish!)

Have a wonderful Easter and thank you for visiting Paper Oasis!

Cindy

We Are Family

Those of you who have been following along with me at Paper Oasis must be getting the idea that every card I make takes hours and hours to create. Well, it is true, I do like to get involved in time consuming projects, but today I'm going to feature a card that is relatively simple to make. The daisy family of five on my card reflects my own family. My husband and I have been blessed with three wonderful daughters. This flower family theme might work well for a Mother's day card or a new baby card. Imagine how cute it would look with an itty-bitty baby flower!

 

All the die cuts were done with my Cricut Baby Bug varying the sizes for each daisy. The daisies are from the Walk in My Garden cartridge. Instead of leaves on my flower stems I used the hearts from the bleeding heart flower from the same cartridge. The lettering is from Lyrical Letters, the Loop Dee Loo font. For those of you not familiar with Lyrical Letters it is a great font cartridge with 6 different fonts. The paper is from K&Company. To finished it off I used a little blue glitter.

On a different note, I have been trying to improve my photography skills for you! I think I'm getting a little better. I read a great tutorial on Split Coast Stampers called Photographing Your Papercrafting Projects by PickleTree. If you are a member you can check it out at: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/forums/photography-f217/htdt-7-22-09-photographing-your-papercrafting-projects-t515388.html

Thank you for visiting Paper Oasis! Cindy

Spring Lilacs

My favorite spring flowers are lilacs and when I saw the beautiful lilac papers in K&Company's Best of Brenda Walton Paper Pad I knew I had to make a card from them.  There are two sheets of each design in this paper pad, just enough to do a little 3D layering with the lilac bunch I chose for my card. The dragonfly and little butterfly are also from the same two sheets. I knew my card needed some extra embellishing but I wanted to keep the lilacs as the focal point. So I turned to my most cherished paper crafting book Delight in the Details by Lisa M. Pace. You may have noticed with the cards you've seen so far and my handmade flowers that I like to make my own embellishments!

Delight in the Details is jam packed with inspiration for papercrafters. When it came in the mail I took a quick scan though it and then spent the next several days studying every photo and reading every word. It is that good! This book is where I got the idea for the felt flowers and felt background behind the lilacs. The first time I saw the photos in the book of the cream colored embroidery on the cream colored felt, I thought it was so beautifully elegant I knew I had to do something similar someday!

I really can't go into detail about how to make the embroidered leaves and felt flowers because it is copyrighted. I can tell you how I cut the felt background though - I used Cricut and selected a frame from the Storybook cartridge to make a card stock pattern then traced around it onto the felt and cut it out by hand. Die cuts of these frames are also great to rubber stamp on. Color your image, ink the frame edge and you have a great vocal point for your card! The card stock I used for the card itself was from DCWV Textured Brights stack - perfect match! The lace and buttons are from my stash. I painted the buttons and the wings on the dragonfly and butterfly with a light coat of a pearly acrylic paint. I hope you like my lilac card and thank you for visiting Paper Oasis! Cindy

Peach and Teal Card Challenge

Happy Friday everyone! I love looking at paper crafting sites and blogs to see what everyone is up to, but I rarely join in on the card challenges. I really don't like to have requirements or restrictions when I'm crafting. After all, this is my oasis. But once in a while it's fun to give a challenge a try. Joan's Gardens (joanscreations.blogspot.com), does a weekly card and tag challenge. For Joan's card challenge number #11 the requirements were to use the colors peach and teal, use butterflies and add something frilly. So, keeping in mind that I'm not very good at following directions, this is the card I came up with:

The colors were easy enough, I love peach and teal. The butterfly, well, I'm pretty sure it's actually a moth. But his color was perfect, much better than my butterfly alternatives, so who could resist? As for frilly, my flower is quite frilly I do believe. It's a mum made from just regular card stock. The tutorial for making it was found on this most wonderful paper crafting blog, A Touch of Grace by Jerri Kay. Jerri's mums are much more "mum like" than mine (try saying that 10 times fast), probably because when it comes to following instructions I'm easily distracted and tend to go off on my own tangent. In fact, I was so distracted that I never got around to entering my finished card in Joan's challenge. Well, maybe next time. The moth and two little flower motifs were cut from K&Company's Que Sera Sera paper pad. The peachy color paper was from K&C's Spring Blossom paper pad.
Thank you for visiting Paper Oasis! Cindy