Be Inspired #17 Card

This is my card for Beate's BIC17.
I used Beetle Black Crushed Velvet cardstock by Doodlebug for the background, and the flower centres. The flowers are punched with an X-Cut punch called Flower Head from Chenille Flocked cardstock - Lily White, also by Doodlebug, and shaped with a ball tool as per yesterday's tutorial. Gives a really intense black and white contrast - difficult to pick up the velvety-ness though! If you enlarge the close-up shot you can see the pile a little bit on the flowers. I used a linen textured card for the stems and leaves, for the matting around the top black layer, and for the card base. To make the leaves, I punched out a five pointy petaled flower shape, and then cut off each petal like pie wedges. I shaped them with my character tool on the moulding mat before gluing next to the stems. The stems are just thin slivers of card cut with the paper trimmer, which twist by themselves if cut thin enough.

I used my 1/2" circle punch to shape the corners of the top layer, and painted white flat back pearls with a black permanent marker to match. Finished with a sheer white ribbon . The card is 10.5 x 21 cm (approx. 4 x 8 inches) .

Be Inspired #15 Card

Beate's Be Inspired Challenge this week was a challenge indeed! There is nothing about the dress that I like, and on my first look I gave up. But then I decided not to wimp out, and went back for a second go.
My first step was to see what card I had that matched the colours - does anyone else sit in front of the computer holding pieces of card up to the monitor? Anyway - I don't have anything approaching the grey in the dress, but did find a piece of bluey/grey that is very similar to one of the dress colours. Then I took the picture into Photoshop so that I could enlarge it and see more of the detail of the main circular design - which is flower-like!
As I don't have any stamps that would fit in with the look, I fished through my punches to see what I had to mimic the overall feel of it. I have one punch that broke recently - a bit of the cutting part snapped off. So it punches a swirl with a fat end. Worked out just fine for my 'flower' medallion! I punched out 12 white swirls and stuck them to a punched sun shape. Then added 12 brown swirls around the outside of that. The centre is made with a larger sun shape punched out of the blue/grey card, with 12 little brown 1/8" spots stuck on the tips. Finished with a 1/2" circle in the middle, and then mounted the whole thing on a green Nestability scalloped circle.
The card base is white linen textured card, and measures 15x10.5cm (4x6" approx). The blue/grey panel on the card is cuttlebugged with Divine Swirls and matted onto brown Bazzill Basics card. The background is Bazzill Bling Sunset. Pebbles Inc Rub-On greeting on a white linen card strip rounded with my corner rounder punch. Brads to finish.

Be Inspired Challenge #14

This is my take on Beate's inspiration piece. The card is all Bazzill Bling - Sunset, 24 Karat, and Emerald City. I cut the Sunset curved shapes freehand with scissors, and then sponged both the shapes and the 24 Karat rectangle with ink from Ancient Page pads Sienna and Sunburst. The Sunset is layered onto the 24 Karat, and then both matted onto Emerald City.
The little flowers were punched out of printer paper with a Woodware punch - Multi-Christmas Flower, and the yellow centres drawn in with a marker. The green wavy 'stalk' and the main flower stem and leaves were cut from the green card freehand with scissors.
I used the no tools flower method to cut and shape the petals on the main flower - which was also made from printer paper. The black stamens were punched with a Woodware Blink Blink punch, and the yellow centre is made from the same two flowers as the little white ones.