Card making process

I usually have many cards on hand but recently gave a bunch away, so I needed a birthday card that could made quickly. This is the card that I made and I'll explain how you can make it too.

I had some pre-cut flowers that just needed to be colored in, so I grabbed my Chameleon alcohol markers in  tangerine and mellow yellow and colored in two yellow and three orange flowers. I didn't do any fancy coloring, just colored in the images. I prefer to work in odd numbers so I chose 5 flowers. I usually have some card elements that I use frequently, like different types of flowers that are cut out but not colored. This was a tip learned from the YouTube video from It's Me JD.

I felt like they needed some bling, so I added some small orange gems to the center of each flower to give it that little extra bit, plus a little dimension.

I haven't found a company where I can buy a selection of gems so I use nail gems from Anezus, which I found on Amazon while looking for a gem picker as i do have a lot of sequins and those tiny things are hard to pick up.

The next step was to pick a background to showcase the flowers. I took a card blank and blended on some Distress Oxide in Broken China with one of their circular blending sponges. I have several card blanks that are pre-cut to just the right size. I definitely recommend you do this as it saves time and energy. I learned this trick from Jennifer McGuire and it has come in handy since starting to do this.

Once I was satisfied with the background, I choose a sentiment that I thought would work as it's a birthday card then laid the images on to it to find a pleasing pattern. I worked through a few different layouts and came up with this one.

When I cut down my card stock, I usually keep some strips to heat emboss common sentiments on, so I already had this on hand. Now I could just layer this onto a white card base but prefer to frame my cards with another slightly larger layer.

 I took another card blank that was a little larger that had already been pre-cut and embossed it with my Cuddlebug in the Swiss dots embossing folder. It adds a little added something to the white on white card. I then used my A.T.G to run tape along the sides and assembled my card.

I added foam dots to three sides of each flower for dimension and a strip of foam adhesive to the sentiment strip.

My card was now almost complete. I added three dots of Nuvo drops in Morning Dew to the bottom corner of the card as it seemed like it needed that little extra something. After looking at it for a while, It needed some greenery, so I added some leaves that had been pre-cut and colored in. Popping the larger leaves up on foam squares and gluing the smaller leaves in place.

There you have it, a complete card, start to finish in about 15 minutes. The pre-cut card, flowers. leaves and heat embossed sentiment really helped in that time frame. These are all tricks I've learned or seen other card makers use and have incorporated them into my card making.