If you’re not sure how to place flowers, there are two principles that can guide you. The first one is to place flowers around the focal point of the card. The second one is to place decorations in a diagonal. If you combine the two principles, you cluster decorations around the sentiment and let them trail off into opposite corners.

The theme for the Instagram hop this Sunday was Butterfly or Bee and Symmetry. I took the chance to use the recent Flowering tree pop-up die set from Spellbinders. It creates a fantastic four-tiered card that folds flat into a regular A2 format. It’s a real stunner and not too hard to pull off.

This is where things went wrong. Out of sheer habit, I doubled up the die cuts. That meant that I couldn’t create an eclipse card. 🤦🏼‍♀️

Find out how I recovered from my mistake.

I started by laying out the dies on inexpensive watercolor paper and marking out how much space each of them would need. Then I colored the marked areas with Distress Crayons.

At this point I really wanted to add dimension to the card. But it was supposed to be a single layer card. So instead of adding dimension, I added texture.

Tips for coloring flowers: Look for commonalities in the images. If you paint what’s typical, people will recognize the flower and your coloring will seem realistic to them.

It’s not hard to find stamps and dies that say Blessings or Blessed. Not so for Pagan holidays. That’s why I have lots of alphabet dies. The drawback is that I have to cut out each letter individually, and some of them twice.

Cards from this weekend’s card classes will arrive in my Etsy store before the weekend.

These fairy birthday cards are currently available in my Etsy shop. Here’s how you can make your own.

These moose birthday cards are currently available in my Etsy shop. Here’s how you can make your own.

Typography and other nitty-gritty of cardmaking

Before you know it, you have a whole menagerie.

A fine birthday present

New product design for Equinox cards

Holidays, what even are they