My Version of a Partial Cut Flower Die

Last night I saw a card done with a partial cut flower die.  The petals were cut, the center was left intact on the background.  It's designed so that you can lift the petals for dimension.

Being the basically cheap person that I am, I decided I'd just make my own file to cut the flower and not spend the $20 on the die.  Having a file in Make the Cut allows me to resize the image whereas the die would be just a single size.

Doing the file took longer than I anticipated.  After wrestling with it for about 30 minutes, I gave up and went to bed.  Some of my best thinking goes on while I sleep!  As I woke up this morning, I knew exactly what I'd done wrong last night and finished the file in just a few minutes.

The first card was done with 1 1/2" squares of paper and a punch.  I punched the image from the striped square and then punched it again from a lighter shade of coordinating cardstock.  Then I glued just the center of the flower down and lifted the petals so the white background would show through.

 This one was done with the MTC file I made.  I like both cards.  The second one will be much faster to do multiples for Operation Write Home, but I like the contrasting flower in the first one.

Two good options for cards....now, I need to do a partially cut butterfly too!

Tulip Card

A friend from stamp club sent me the instructions to make tulips using a Stampin' Up five petal flower punch.  It intrigued me enough to try my hand at doing it.  You punch the flower and then just remove two of the petals and fold the lower one up to make the outer petal.  It's not difficult to do at all.  Adding some ink will give the petals dimension.

The flower stems and the bird are also a Stampin' Up punch.  I used Design Studio and my George cartridge to cut the oval mats.