Fall Flowers for a Birthday!

GOOD NEWS!  

THIS CARD IS NAMED A

SPLITCOASTSTAMPERS FAVORITE OF THE

WEEK ENDING - OCTOBER 14, 2017!!

One of my cardmaking buddies celebrates her birthday in October, and several of her friends are taking her out to lunch and shower her with birthday cards!  At first I thought I might give her my "A Peek at Fall" card, but then I got a bee in my bonnet and decided I wanted to make her a fall garden card as she is quite the gardener.

I love using elements on my card other than paper, and I haven't done that much lately.   Since I wanted to enter my card into the Splitcoaststampers (SCS) Alphabet Challenge, and I thought I would add some cork flowers to my friends garden, so I chose to complete Letter C.  The optional double letter challenge is X for X-acto. . .I'd worry about how to use that tool in making my card later after I came up with the design.  

Other SCS challenges I checked were the Inspiration Challenge, which requires you to find inspiration by using the website chosen for the weekly challenge.  I found color inspiration at this site.  Another challenge I will use is the Featured Stamper, using the card gallery by beechwood for inspiration.  Beechwood's "A Sunflower Pop-Up Book Card" uses similar colors that I found in the Inspiration Challenge, but it also gave me some design element ideas of using fishtail banners, flowers, and plain and scalloped circle layers.

All this inspiration brought to mind a card that my sister, Heidi Gonzales, designed several years ago, and I pulled up my picture of the card and used her design as inspiration as well.  With all this inspiration, I knew I needed cork, felt, buttons, and some patterned paper.  I sorted through my numerous stashes of patterned papers looking those that had more fall tones, rather than spring.  I actually found some of the papers my sister used, which were by My Minds Eye so I really give her lots of credit for design and color inspiration as well.

To meet the X-acto challenge for the Alphabet Challenge above, I ended up cutting my fishtail banners with an X-acto blade, which I thought would be easiest as it was a straight line!  I'm not so good with the X-acto knife, so I fussy-cut my fishtails with scissors.  I also cut the edges of my felt leaves with my pinking shears for a more jagged look.

Take a peek below at my friends card, which I think she will enjoy for her birthday:

Ingredients:  Papers:  Stampin' Up--Natural's cs (retired), Old Olive, Soft Sky.  Patterned paper: MME-MIss Caroline--Dilly Dally, Dolled Up, Fiddlesticks plus miscellaneous scraps.  Dies:  Spellbinders--Big Scalloped Circles LG #3--2-inch; Nested Leaves (traced/ cut w-pinking shears)   Punches: Stampin' Up--Circles--1-inch, 1-1/4-inch, 1-3/4-inch, Curvy Corner Trio (retired), Word Window (retired), Scallop Edge Border; EK Scalloped--1-1/4-inch; Zutter--Corner Rounder.  Colorbox Chestnut Roan (ink distress).  Stash: Felt (leaves, Cork (flower layers), Buttons, Embroidery Floss, Sequins.  Computer sentiment/ verse.  Size: 4-5/8" x 5-7/8".