Accordion Flower Christmas Card

Have you noticed all of the do-it-yourself flower embellishments that are popping up in the paper crafting world? Do a little searching and there are tutorials on how to make your own flowers from just about anything: punches, die cuts, twisted ribbon, felt, distressed paper, and the list goes on and on.

Today I tried a test run of the accordion flower. Atomic Butterfly is one of my paper crafting heroes and she has a great tutorial on how to make these little embellishments, something she frequently uses in her own work. So this is sort of my ode to her style. :)

As Glen Miller would say, I'm still "In the Christmas Mood" with my cards so that is the theme I ran with today. I wanted to use lots of patterned paper so I rummaged through my stash looking for green and red ones to use. The paper I used for the accordion is the same red that is in the bottom panel. The stamp set I used is a holiday favorite of mine, SU!'s Winter Post. I love the vintagey look of the images, especially the ice skating couple. In keeping with that old time feeling, all of the layers have been sponged for an aged look. On the bottom panel I stamped the postmark image from the set directly onto the patterned paper. I then stamped it again onto vanilla card stock and cut out just the round portion. The round image fit nicely on a 1" circle of Old Olive and then I popped it up with foam tape to mimic the dimension of the main accordion flower.

In Atomic Butterfly's tutorial she says that she originally would attach her flowers using glue dots, but has since changed to using a glue gun. I would highly recommend the glue gun approach as my flower burst apart after a day with only glue dots holding it together. No good!

Whew! Sorry I was a little on the verbose side today. If you made it all the way down here to the bottom you're a trooper. Thanks for sticking with me and thanks for reading!


Warning: If you try one of these yourself, follow directions! Don't do what I did and skim the instructions, think "no problem", then blithely go ahead and make your flower twice the diameter you wanted it, exactly the way she tells you not to if you were paying attention. It's that pesky math again. Ha!


SUPPLIES
Stamps: Winter Post, Polka Dot (background)
Paper: Crumb Cake, Old Olive, Very Vanilla, Bella Rose dp, unknown striped SU! dp, Plastino dp by Bella Blvd.
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Creamy Caramel, Old Olive
Accessories: Cutter Bee circle cutter, 1" circle punch, foam tape, mini glue dots