Hello all you crafty people and welcome back! Today I am sharing a card I created back in February, using supplies from The Greetery's new February release. I am finally getting around to posting it and it's just in time for the Spring season which will be upon us in a short 8 days.
Now, if you did not get a chance to check out the February release from The Greetery I highly recommend you do so. All the products I used in today's card will be linked below, but the list is by no means exhaustive of what is available from their amazing release.
I have barely scratched the surface of all the amazing cards and techniques you can use with this new release and how they pair with some of their older supplies.
For today's card I used the new BotaniCuts Strawberries Die Set. This is a part of their larger BotaniCuts line. One thing I love about The Greetery is that they have different lines of products that they will often add to with each new release. This helps me stretch my supplies and also stimulate my creativity.
These strawberries are not only super cute, but have coordinating dipper dies that can make them look like they are dipped in chocolate. It really helps this set be very versatile for not only Valentine's Day, but year round as well.
I started by cutting the strawberry and leaf dies multiple times from a heavy weight white cardstock. As you can see, the dies even gie the little seed marks that are on real strawberries. I then grabbed some detail blending brushes, die ink. For this card I used Altenew detail blending brushes and inks from the Stamp Market, sat down, and inked each strawberry and leaf on my Waffle Flower media mat.
PRO TIP: Google or photograph real life items up close and use them as inspiration for your art. I went to my local Farmer's Market shortly before receiving these products in the mail and coincidentally one of the vendors had strawberries. I purchased some and snapped a few up close photos.
One thing I learned in inking these berries (apart from how fun it was), is that it was okay to use a variety of colors. For example, I got that light red look on the side of the berry using a Peach ink. This made it look like the berry was still ripening on the edge. I did the same thing for overripened spots by using a darker burgundy color.
Next, I used The Greetery Shiplap Builder die to cut the pieces used for my 'crate' sitting behind the basket. I cut this from white cardstock and used the same process of inking the pieces using Altenew's Coffee Break set of inks. You can use colored cardstock if you don't have blending brushes, or inks or even the time! But I find that I really like the depth of color and dimension I can add by inking on my own -- most of the time!
Lastly, I cut the the largest Market Basket die and label from a gold cardstock, the liner from vellum, and stamped the sentiment 'picked fresh' onto a piece of cardstock using the coordinating Market Basket Sentiments stamp set. I also used The Greetery's crimped frames die (one of my favorites) to create the white background for the card.
Assembly
I laid down the crimped mat onto a red card base, and in the lower left corner placed the shiplap pieces down in a row.
I should note that the shiplap pieces were created to use as an entire background as shown in the example below that I pulled from The Greetery website. I chose to use just a few pieces to create a box look.
I arranged the basket pieces onto the 'basket', making sure to only glue the edges and not the center of the basket. I like to leave some space to be able to slide items into the basket.
After arranging the strawberries and leaves how I liked, I glued them down with a series of liquid glue, tape runner and foam tape for some dimension. To add an additional layer of dimension, I cut some of the leaves from their stem and doubled them on top of another leaf.
Lastly, if felt like something was missing so I decided to cut some flowers and stems using the BotaniCuts Wildflower Mix die set, which is another of my favorites. I cut these and inked them up with green for the stems and yellow for the flowers to add some contrast to the red of the berries.
That is it! I will admit that this card took quite some time as I was feeling my way through it the entire time. But I really enjoyed the process of putting it together, and I love even more how it turned out. I cannot wait to use these berry dies even more -- especially as the weather begins to warm up here in California.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend and stay crafting!
<3 April
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