Sunflower Birthday…

As you can tell, I am experimenting with some new looks on here… still not satisfied, and might start from scrap. BIL is going to be *so* impressed.

Back to cards!

So, you might notice a pretty new blinkie on my sidebar… I was beyond excited on Saturday when I tuned in for the latest Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge, and saw that my card had been chosen as one of three Top Mouses for the previous week!!! Honestly, I couldn’t possibly put into words how excited I was about this – there were so many other fantastic entries, and definitely others I thought were better deserving than my humble contribution. This is my first little award, and I am so stinkin’ proud of it! If you’re curious, you can see my winning entry here.

Now onto this week’s sketch – and I am afraid that I have not come close to last week’s creativity. I was struggling with the sketch; how I wanted to interpret it. The kids have been quite a handful this week, and I am working on an average of maybe 5 hours of sleep a night (if you know me, you know I like at least double that amount). Anyway, in the very wee hours of this morning, as I was nursing my 7 week old, it came to me…

I need a birthday card for a friend who loves sunflowers. In my half asleep stupor, it came to me that Claire (the head Mouse herself!) had posted a tutorial on how to make ribbon flowers… so I thought I could use this to create a sunflower.

Here is this week’s sketch:

And here is my card:

To see Claire’s ribbon flower tutorial, check it out here. As usual, her tutorial was very easy, and such an impressive outcome.

I followed that tutorial, then I used a CD to trace out a large enough circle to become the center of my sunflower. I just used construction paper for this – I liked the sort of texture it appears to have. I cut the edge with pinking shears, then ran it through a cuttlebug folder to give it the ‘seeds’. I made my label using my current fave, “Say it with Style”.

It’s not so great – I really feel it’s lacking something – but I really did enjoy making the flower, and can definitely see doing something with this in the future!!