Hello crafty friends. Welcome to another card that features quite a bit of die cutting, using Stampin’ Up!’s ‘tulip’ dies. This week’s theme at The Paper Players is ‘April showers’ and Time Out challenges have gone with ‘spring’, so tulips seemed an obvious choice. The ones in my garden are just coming to the end of their flowering. I realised after I finished, however, that The Paper Players’ challenge is also ‘clean and simple’ – I’m not sure it totally fits the brief with the die cutting and patterned paper, but too late now so my apologies to the team!

I started by cutting out the various piece for the tulips using a sheet of the ‘flowering fields’ paper and glued them together. I had to watch a YouTube video to work this out (which is why I hadn’t used them before now!) – they look very complicated, but as ever it’s easy once you know how! Huge thanks to Sandy McCullough whose video I found on Pinterest for the clear explanation – here’s the link https://youtu.be/IkR3be4uCHY

I attached a sheet of the 6×6 ‘sunshine and rainbows’ Saleabration paper to a 7×7 card blank, then added the tulips on foam pads (I made a couple more of the buds). I added the die cut stems and leaves to complete the bunch.

I stamped a sentiment from the ‘flowering tulips’ set using a ‘coastal cabana’ Write marker on the stamp, and die cut it with one of the ‘tasteful labels’ dies. My original plan had been to have white leaves, but i felt it looked unbalanced, so I cut more leaves out of another sheet of the ‘sunshine and rainbows’ paper and glued them over the white ones to finish it.

This will be winging it’s way to a friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer – such difficult times.