A Tulip (or two) For You

I was chatting online with my youngest sister, Erin, on Saturday about papercrafty-type stuff (she used to be a demo, too), and she mentioned that she never uses black cardstock. And that got me thinking... Hmmm... I don't use black much either. I have a whole pack, but I don't remember when or why I purchased it. So I sat down to stamp, determined to include black in my design. And this is what resulted.

Actually, I was also intent on using the tulip, too. I'd made it last week, and still had yet to do anything with it. I checked a flower-meaning site and found that tulips are general purpose flowers. They don't really mean anything in particular, just make people smile. Hence the generic 'For You' sentiment.

I managed to use a single stamp set (Fresh Cuts) for the whole card. Five stamps come in this set, might as well use them together, right? I used three of the five.

Ingredients (all SU!):
Stamps: Fresh Cuts
Paper: Kiwi Kiss, Pale Plum, Perfect Plum, Basic Black, More Mustard, Very Vanilla, Urban Garden
Ink: Kiwi Kiss, Orchid Opulence, Creamy Caramel, Close to Cocoa, Basic Black
Punches: Wide Oval, Large Oval, Small Oval, Tag Corner
Other: Top Note die, Chocolate Chip marker, pewter jumbo eyelent and mini brad, sponge daubers, 5/8" Old Olive grosgrain ribbon

And just because I know you'll appreciate it, here's a mini tutorial on how I made the tulip.

What you'll need:

• Wide Oval punch
• Large Oval punch
• Small Oval punch
• Scrap of flower-colored cardstock
• Scrap of stem/leaf-colored cardstock
• Sponge daubers and ink for shading

1. Punch one of each oval in your desired bloom color. Here I'm using So Saffron.
2. Put the wide oval punched shape back in the punch as shown, and punch out a DQ-type shape that is about 3/4" at the widest point of the curve.
3. Snip the middle out of the small oval punched shape.
4. Grab a sponge dauber and an ink pad and shade the edges of your pieces as shown. Here I've used Apricot Appeal.
5. Glue your large oval shape onto the wide oval shape, centered in the U made in Step 2, and with the bottom edges even. (You can see that I also added darker 'veining' with Really Rust and an aquapainter)
6. Glue the small oval 'ears' to the back, centered in the V's created by the two larger oval shapes.
7. Cut a straight stem and two leaves from your green cardstock (I'm using Kiwi Kiss). My stem is 1/4" by 3" (or thereabouts). For my leaves, I cut a 2"x3" rectangle, folded it in half length-wise, and cut a long curve through both layers first on one side, then the other.
8. Use a sticky note (cut a hint of a curve on the sticky side) to shield half of a leaf so you can ink the other. Repeat with the other leaf, and add shading to the stem.
9. Assemble your tulip.
Tadaaaa.....!


Here's a super-simple alternate tulip. Not as 'WOW' as the tulip above, but still a tulip. I plan to do a dozen of these along the bottom of a two-page scrapbook layout. Basically, you take a Wide Oval shape and punch off the top with your Scallop Edge punch as shown below. Easy!


Thanks for visiting!