Purple Petal Power

I have a couple quick birthday cards to show today using some petals from a bouquet of silk flowers I picked up on sale.  I was initially drawn to this dark purple bunch because the of the intense color.  But because I can't really go through a store without touching everything, I discovered that the petals had a soft velvety feel to them on the dark side, and a crunchy nylon feel on the side with the lighter hue.  So I bought them!  I was thinking they would look lovely on a set of handmade notecards. 
In the meantime, I needed a couple of birthday cards so I decided to give the flower petals a test run.  What's great about this bouquet is that I was able to use both front/back sides of the petal for some additional variance in color & texture. 

I used a basic light gray cardstock for the card base and added a mat using an older style paper from Anna Griffin's collection.  I detoured the color for the fibers to a teal as opposed to the hue of green shown in the silk leaves -- I just liked the way it added a bit more intense color to the cards (if you crop out the green leaves in the background, the teal looks so much better-LoL).  I tied to the bow to resemble leaves, used brads to secure the flower petals, added a bit of tinsel glitter to the fibers on one of the cards, and finished with three small rhinestones.  For the quotes on the front of the cards, I used my own handwriting and a sharpie following the stems of the flowers on the designer paper.


What a difference the Glossy Accents make -- IMO

After I took the initial picture for this blog post I just thought something was missing.  So I decided to add some Glossy Accents to some of the flower elements on the designer paper to finish the look.  Once the Glossy Accents is dry it gives it a raised glassy effect -- which I liked as a "filler" for the look of the card.


I already have a few ideas brewin' for some other projects using these flowers -- I'm thinking I'll save those for a rainy day.  =)

Happy Weekend!  Lisa