Hummingbird and Columbine

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! 

We had a warm and beautiful week, last week. Now that the holiday weekend is here, It's cold. I mean cold, like it dipped into the 30's last night. It's suppose to warm up a little by tomorrow so there's still hope for some outside activities without jackets.

I guess it was cold yesterday and today for a reason......so I could get some cards made. I can now do some creating without a sling on my arm so I have more freedom of my left hand. I still have lots of pain, but you don't realize how much you need both arms until you can't use one for a while. 

I have a baggie of pre-colored images already printed out for ages now, so I thought I would match them up with some of the new digi papers from Fred She Said, called Floral Surprise, for this card. This digital paper set was designed by Donna of Bearly Mine Designs using various floral graphics from Fred She Said Designs.

I found the image of the Hummingbird and Columbine and knew it was perfect. As soon as I saw this brown background paper, I fell in love. It just makes the flowers pop so beautifully. I decided to also print the paper in green. Come back next Friday, May 31st for the Fred She Said Blog Hop and see the card I made with the green paper and purple crocuses.
 I tried a technique where I cut may base card 5" x 7". Then the DP was cut 4 3/4" x 6 3/4". From there, I wasn't sure what would happen. I cut a 1" frame from that piece. Then took the piece from the center and cut a 1" frame from that. Then the little piece in the middle was what was left. I then matted each piece with retired CTMH Sunkiss Yellow Cardstock each being 1/4" bigger then the DP.  It was so beautiful that I hated to covert it up. But the image was already printed. Had it not been, I would have made it smaller. 

I used some hot pink seam binding to wrap the top of the second piece and add a bow. I usually like to add more embellishments to my cards, but the background paper is so busy that I didn't think further embellishments were necessary. 
I did however, add some hand stitching with yellow embroidery floss around the edge of the base dp.

FSS Hat Tipping Snowman

I almost forgot to post this card in time. It was made for the Merry Monday weekly Christmas Card
Challenge ovedr at Always Playing with Paper. This week is challenge along with the sketch is Clean and Simple. This is not my style of card making but I had some gorgeous papers in my stash for so long and thought they woulkd be just perfect for this challenge. I had to turn the sketch 90° to make it work.
There are shimmery swirls in the paper that show up on the photo but are only seen on the card depending on which angle you are looking at it.

The Hat Tipping Snowman and Flying Winter Birds images are from Fred She Said. They are both the pre-colored images. The Winter Wonderland is from Close to my Heart.

The hand stitching was done with white embroidery floss. Yes, I even sew straight stitching by hand. I like the look of it much better then done by a sewing machine.

I added some white Liquid Applique to the base of the snowman to tie him into the scene. The I added some chunky Glass Glitter to add more texture and sparkle.