TGIF – How Does Your Garden Grow?

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Happy Friday, friends! I’m up for today’s TGIF project – it’s something I’ve had in mind for a bit, and was excited to find some time this week to put the idea into action! I’ve been loving the BotaniCuts Wildflower die from our latest release, and I thought it would be fun to combine it with our Square Dance die (which makes a great lattice background!) to grow a cute springy garden. While it’s been pretty nice here, we are still a ways off from having real flowers growing, so the paper version will have to do for now.

I set to work creating this spring scene by starting off with the BotaniCuts Wildflower Mix die. I used the same technique as in THIS introductory video for the die — sponging with ink and adding details with colored pencils and pens. When I was finished coloring, I assembled the little blossoms onto the stems. I then had a whole garden of wildflowers to arrange on my lattice background.

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I decided it would be fun to create a card base that allowed the lattice to peek-a-boo to the inside of the card, so I pulled out my Nordic Frames die and diecut it from the front of my card base. This left just a narrow border around the edges. Since you are using the negative portion of the diecut, any die that’s slightly smaller than your card base will work – the design or pattern of it doesn’t really matter, you just need it to create a window. I sponged some Tumbled Glass Oxide ink to the top portion of the card base – both on that outer frame/card front and on the inside of the card, since it shows through the window.

I then went to work arranging my wildflower stems on the Square Dance lattice diecut, tucking the stems into the squares, and layering them to create a full garden. Once I was happy with it and the flowers were all adhered, I secured my lattice panel over my card base (the one I just cut the window from). The lattice just gets adhered to that narrow frame around the edges. To give the inside of the card a cleaner appearance and cover my flower stems, I cut a second lattice and adhered it to the inside of the card, back-to-back against my front lattice piece.

To finish it off, I decided my garden needed some grass, so I used the Drifting die to cut the gentle slope and pretty scroll detail along the bottom. This die was designed to be snow drifts, but sponge it with some green ink and it makes for pretty rolling hills, too! Finally, I added a sentiment which was done with the Let’s Have a Word: Spring die and a “happy” from the PreText Sentiments stamp set, stamped onto a matching PreText Banners diecut.

Thanks so much for joining me today – I hope you enjoyed this fun project and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!