SNOW GARDEN COLLECTION BY SUSAN TIERNEY-COCKBURN
Susan Tierney-Cockburn has created many wonderful realistic flower dies and tutorials on how to put them together. These new additions to her line live up to the greatest of all expectations, creating 3D or flat cards with the glimmer machine.
This first one is called Glory of Snow. This was new-to-me flower but in looking into it found that it is a perennial in hardiness zones of 3-9. It comes up very early in the spring from a small bulb and the flowering will last about 3 weeks. It is usually blue with white centers but can be a pale pink as well.
For my card I wanted the flowers to stand out on a white background but have the card base match the blue. To make the flowers you cut out lots of leaves and flower petals as well as a piece to roll to make the stamen. It is much easier to put together than it looks.
I took each of the petals and colored both sides with Altenew Persian Blue alcohol marker. For the leaves I colored both sides with Altenew Mountain Pine and Grass Fields alcohol markers. The petals and leaves have score marks in them to create curve and dimension. There are specific tools in Susan’s tool kit that will help to create the curves but there are ways to do it without as well. I have used both. If you don’t have the tool kit, take a curved pointed tool and press along the scored line with the petal or leaf on top of a foam pad (even the Misti pad works). Take some tweezers and bend backwards the tip of the flowers. They look soooo life-like at this point. (tool kit is the easiest option) In gluing them together I found that Zots or Glue dots works a bit better than liquid glue as it would stick but not have a dry time wait.
For the stamen, just put a very small line of glue along the bottom then hold on with tweezers and roll it up tight. When dry, separate the “stamen” — the whole thing then looks like a teeny badminton birdie –lol. I found two ways to create the “powder” on the stamen. 1. Dip in glue and then dip into the Woodland Scenics Yellow Pollen sold at Spellbinders. 2. Use Distress Snowfall paste mixed with yellow ink and dip paper stamen into then let dry. I also found it easier to use lots of reverse tweezers – one per stamen until they dried. Then they weren’t laying down and drying glued together.
The base was matched as closely as possible to the flower color, plus I ink blended the upper right and lower left corner of the base, getting some of it on the white. Since the white ovals were already glued down, that was a mistake but rather than redo I just continued the blue around the white oval to give it a glow effect. No such thing as a mistake in crafting — just a way to redo something. When done I still felt like it needed something more in the background so I added the gold splatters. Oh la la, classy looking now!
This second one is the Crocus and Ladybugs. The flowers were made the same as mentioned above in the Glory of Snow. I wanted this card to be a bit fancier so I made a 5.5″x5.5″ card base, embossed it with Spellbinders Four Petal 3D Floral Embossing folder, making sure the raised areas were going to show the same way on the front and inside. I folded over the front piece at 2.75″. With a light hand I ink blended some purple ink to show the embossing more, edged the card base with the same purple ink and added Wink of Stella to the flower centers.
I made a smaller card — first cutting a piece of white cardstock 4″ by 10.5″, scoring 3.5″ from each end, then making it a trifold card. TIP: stamp your greeting inside before attaching it to larger base. I added a piece of yellow plaid patterned paper to the front. The best way I have found to put the two cards together is to close up the smaller card and set it where you want it in the inside of the larger card base gluing it down. Then the top of the smaller card can be put over the front fold of the larger base, gluing down only half of the small card to the large base. This gives you a nice card that will easily stand up.
From then on, it was just arranging the flowers, leaves and sentiment on the front of only the small card. A few sequins and, OF COURSE, the ladybug was added to finish it off.
This third card was made with the mighty Spellbinder Glimmer Machine. Using ivory cardstock I foiled the plate with green foil. I used the oval dies to cut out the foiled section and a slightly larger oval to create a frame. The card base was embossed with a Gina K Designs Tapestry embossing folder to give it some texture. Before assembling this I colored in the red berries and the pine cones with Altenew alcohol markers. I had some red chunky glitter in my stash and found that it worked well for some added bling to the front. The Merry Christmas sentiment was foiled in red and the green strip of glitter paper covered a spot the embossing could not reach. I was really pleased with this one and felt it was relatively quick and yet very elegant!
You will be sure to impress the recipient with one of these cards.
Hope you enjoyed my renditions from the Spellbinders August Release. I had a great time making them and learned more techniques along the way. Please leave a comment below and tell me what you like best and would you try them too? If you do, I’d love for you to tag me @pennypynnonen both on Facebook and Instagram.
Have a great day!
Hugs,
Penny
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