Bloom

Sometimes we craft too much with "what is" instead of with "what could be." Let me show you what I mean.

I fell in love with this card  a few days ago. I decided I wanted to make my own version using supplies I have. Here's mine...

The grid background and boots all come from the Flower Market Cricut Cartridge, but the grid came from this...

I ungrouped the vase, got rid of the green background image, unlocked the size to stretch it taller and wider, copied and pasted it, turned one 90 degrees, welded the two together, and then sliced out a rectangle measuring 3x 4.25 so it would fit behind the stitched die cut frame. I added some vellum paper behind it to soften the effect of the grid lines.

Now for the boots. The original image is the pink one. I don't happen to like the outlined images like this, so I did some slicing and contouring to create solid sections.

I'm not going to lie. This took a long time.

A.

LOOOONG.

Time.

But I really like how it turned out, so that makes it worth it. Plus, now that the work is done, I can come back to this and use it for other projects. However, if you have the Flower Market cartridge and Design Space, here's the cutting file for both the grid and the boots.

The flowers come from a stamp set called Where Happiness Blooms. It features a watering can with those tulips coming out of the top. I only stamped the top half of the watering can image to get the outline, stamped the fill shapes once in the lighter color then sponging the edges in darker for the shading. The leaves are Mint and Emerald; the tulips are Ballerina and Raspberry.

And now the sentiment banner. I stamped "BLOOM" (wiping ink off of the comma at the end of the word) on a piece of White Daisy cardstock and then went hunting in my Fancy Tags for one that would fit. None of them did. So I did some altering of that, too. I used the tag one way over the top of the word, cut it, flipped the tag over and centered it so the slanted ends were evenly spaced around the word, and cut again.

Once the black background was cut, I assembled the card in layers. I added some Crafty Loose Sequins at the end to carry some of that Caroline Blue cardstock from the boots into other areas of the card.

I get it. This is a lot of work for one card.

A.

LOOOOOT.

Of.

Work.

But my purpose was to show you how to stretch your supplies. Just because a thing is created one way doesn't mean you have to use it that way. Start seeing your supplies as tools and make them work for you.

Until next time,
Becca