CELEBRATE VASE

I love when stamp sets allow me to have lots of components ready to put a card together in a flash. That is the case with the Basket of Blooms set (page 48 in the Annual Catalog), in conjunction with the Small Bloom punch on page 165, makes possible. 

The flower stamp from the set works well with the punch, which makes doing a bunch of flowers a snap. The tall vase stamp from the set is simple to fussy cut.

The best part though? Doing this enables me to use up lots and lots of scraps of Designer Series Papers I have around. I LOVE that!

The flower and the vase don't have to match at all. 

In fact, I think it's better if they are a nice contrast, as in my card below.

Popped up against a textured background, with no stem at all, is a simple but effective way to present a celebratory bouquet to the recipient.

The cool textured background was made easily with one of the new smaller embossing folders, Greenery, page 184. I flipped the embossed piece upside down from what is normally expected. I love the fresh look of this. Even though it isn't apparent in the photo, the background is done on Very Vanilla cardstock.

Stamping and fussy cutting/punching a plethora of vases and flowers gives you lots of options to play with. To make a card then, what with all your vases ready to be filled with cute flowers, just choose a cardstock that complements one of the colors in your vase/flower, and use that for your card base. Add a few black cardstock strips to the side to balance everything out. And throw a sentiment across the bottom . . .

. . . and voila!, you have a cool quick-and-easy card without much bulk.

The sentiment I chose to use on my card is from the Celebrate Sunflowers set on page 13. This is such a glorious set. Have you seen or used it yet?

I cut the embossed piece to 3" x 5 1/4". 

The sentiment stamp fits perfectly on a 3" long strip of Very Vanilla cardstock. 

Please note the coloring and lighting of the card lying in the midst of all the vases and flowers. That shows exactly what the card looks like. The other photos show the card very washed out and unappealing.

This has been a problem for me for a long time. I have a little portable lighting box for my cards. It has a built-in light strip across the top front of the box. I am NEVER happy with the results of my photography. 

Do any of you have other photo set-up ideas you could share with me? I am not at all tech savvy, so it would have to be something quite simple.

The difference in the lighting in these photos is that all the pale washed out photos were taken in my photo box, while the one with the truer colors was taken lying flat on my table with natural lighting. 

I would dearly love to hear from someone who has a reasonable solution to my woes. Thank you in advance!

Quick and Easy

Smiles.