Hi there!
I don't know if it's the slightly cooler temperatures we've been having lately, the back to school chatter every where you turn, the fact that my referee husband has his first football game of the season tonight, or maybe it's the gorgeous fall photos that Nichole posted on her blog for this month's Blog Hop. It might even be a combination of them all, but this time of year often has me reaching for my stash of cork sheets. There's definitely something bookish and school-y about cork and it's color is obviously fall-ish in nature, but it's also a really fun texture to use on your cards and other paper crafty projects. Fall, after all, is all about texture with it's cozy socks, snuggly sweaters and warm, toasty scarves! I've got a fun project to share with you today....some cork and paper flowers, that you could put on a set of cards, as I've done, or they would even make darling magnets for the teacher in your life!
To get started, I pulled out several flower die collections and die cut a pile of cork flowers. I used the Frilly Flowers dies, Notched Flower dies, and the Beautiful Blooms II dies.
Did you know you can even stamp on cork? I couldn't resist adding some fun detail to a few of the flowers, so I turned to my much loved Polka Dot Basics II stamp set. This set has had a permanent place of residence on my desk since it came out.....in July.....of 2009! Polka Dot Basics II has literally been in the little cubby on my desk, where I keep all of my current favorites......for THREE years! lol. It's a good set. What can I say?
Anyhoo, so after stamping the flowers, I die cut a few more flowers from dark chocolate pattern pack papers, and then put the flowers together, alternating cork and patterned paper.
Each flower was topped with a dark chocolate or kraft button. The leaves for each flower were die cut from Sweet Symphony patterned paper, using the Frilly Flowers leaf die.
Each of the note cards is a 4 1/4" square and the front of each was impressed with the new Herringbone Impression Plate. I inked the edges with vintage touch tea dye ink and then splatted on a few drops of Mister Huey's spray mist in Overdue.
To add the sentiments, I die cut strips of kraft card stock with a Half & Half die, and then stamped each with a sentiment from Pretty Peonies. The sentiments coordinate perfectly with the Half & Half die cut and with the variety of sentiments in the Pretty Peonies set, I was able to use a different one on each card, for a fun little gift set of cards.
Do you have cork sheets you can bust out and play with today? If so, then happy crafting! And if not, I bought mine at Michael's, in the aisle with the large cork bords and such. These came in a pack of 8 1/2" x 11" sheets - about 6 sheets in the pack, for just a few dollars. Perhaps a cork project is just the ticket for a little crafting project this weekend! If so and you want to share what you created, feel free to add the link to your project here in the comments section so we can all see what you came up with!
Take care,
{Cork Flower card set supplies -- click on thumbnails}