Flamingo Valentine

I hope this Valentine makes you smile - I had a lot of fun making it! I have several friends who are "into" flamingos (you know who you are!) and I think there are many others who find them amusing.  The file is made with Life is a Beach and George.  If you don't have George you can use the George heart as a pattern and adapt a heart from another cartridge to fit.

 

 The original shape was a bit too wide to have two fit comfortably on an A2 card so I adapted the shape.  I also lengthened the shape in stretched the neck a bit.  Then I had to adapt the layers to make it all fit.

There are several mats in the file.  I have labeled each mat with the size of paper you need to cut the various pieces. There is no blackout or shadow version of the flamingo so I created my own blackout using "hide selected contour."

 

I set the file up on a 12 x 6 mat but if you have an Expression you can put all of the papers on your12 x 12 mat as shown above (please ignore my dirty mat - I need to clean it!).  Then just turn and reload the mat to cut the page with the blackout.  The heart is on a separate page so you can set that page for multi cut x2 if you use glitter cardstock as I did in this sample.  If you are using regular cardstock, just copy and paste it onto the mat with the flamingo layers to be more efficient.

Here are all of the cut pieces.  The legs are extremely thin and delicate and you could cut off the black layer at the top of the legs if you don't like the slight shadow effect you will get after embossing the yellow layer.

 

I used the "Mesh" Cuttlebug folder to emboss the legs and I put the legs in upside down so the raised bumps would be on the top.  For the flamingo bodies I used the "D'Vine Swirl" folder and carefully positioned the cuts so the swirls would fall in interesting and logical places.

  

I put adhesive on my blackout base layer and added the embossed yellow layer on top - this helps keep the embossing intact.

  

Once these layers are together you can see that the black layer shows a bit - I don't mind this since it actually helps the legs stand out against the card background.  If it bothers you,  just trim off the black legs before assembling.

  

The card base is an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of cardstock cut in half in portrait orientation to make two pieces 4.25 x 11.  This is scored and folded in half with the fold at the top.  The next layer is the same deep pink cardstock that I used for the flamingo bodies and it is cut at 4 x 5.25 inches.  The top layer is cut from a piece of cardstock from the DCWV "Sweet" stack that has a border design - I just wanted this sparkly curlicue background without the border design.  This layer is cut at 3.75 x 4 inches.

 

 

Be sure to figure out the placement of the heart using the flamingos as your guide and adhere it to the top layer before adding the flamingos.  I added tiny black gems for their eyes.  I thought the black in the beaks looked a little harsh so I tried some orange Stickles to fill in the cut areas.

 

The Stickles look much better in person than they do in the photo!  I think they were still a bit wet when I took this.

If you download the file and make this card I'd love to see how yours turns out - thanks!

Flamingo Valentine