Our neighbor is retiring soon and as he loves his garden and very generously shares some of his produce with us, I decided to make him a retirement card. We harvested a bunch of his apples yesterday. The Card Concept #229 {Sunflower Delight} has a delightful image to use as inspiration and I was intrigued by the mix of sunflowers and other items as part of the mantle. As my card uses an embossing folder I am also entering it into Anything Goes With A Twist of Cloudy Day at CYHTP but no twist taken.

The other day I pulled out some stencils as some of my pastes were going very hard and I thought perhaps I could use them up before throwing them away. I finished off a Brutus Munroe glitter paste using a brick wall stencil and I used some gold butter paste on another scrap card stock with the same stencil. I tried mixing some colour into an old white paste but it had gone too far to be successful so I ditched it almost right away. Anyway these pieces were sitting on my desk where I had left them to dry.

I remembered that I had an EF that was also a brick wall – this one by Tim Holtz if I remember correctly. I ran it through and used some lost Shadow ink over the raised sections so the embossing showed better. As you can see the Inspo image became my focus and I built my card to look somewhat similar. With all that has been going on for a week or so, I hadn’t felt much like creating, so having a photo to follow helped a lot in my creativity. In my stash I have some laser cut florals by 49th and Market so I took some of them to add to my fireplace. Using the glitter piece I cut it down leaving enough on each side to become a flap so when added it would stand up. I also cut the space for the fire. Then I added the black mantle top and glued it all to the embossed background. Taking the laser cuts I played until I had something I liked and then glued or added foam tape to make it stand out. The two sunflowers are from a forgotten bunch of florals I’ve had for a long time. I cut off the stems and made them as flat as possible on the back before using them here. They are a little bigger than I would have preferred but sadly, I don’t have any sunflower stamps or dies, so using something already made was the best way for me today.

The sentiment was created on my computer, cut to size and added as you see. I’m not sure of my style for this card, but after looking at the definitions on the website I believe it is a combination of Mixed Media, and Freestyle collage. Hopefully my mojo will be back properly after working on this card. Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate you and your time.