Martha's Pansies

I bought a magazine called "Stamper's Sampler Take Ten" at Borders a couple of weeks ago.  It was a surprise that it cost $14.99 (magazines cost more than books sometimes!) but I have really enjoyed looking at all of the cards and ideas.  Here is a LINK to the web page for the magazine (along with a lot of other interesting publications by the same company).

There were quite a few cards based on a challenge which involved a basic A2 card (5.5 x 4.25 inches) with a strip removed from the front and the corners rounded.  I liked this style of card so I decided to give it a try.

Another recent purchase was this new Martha Stewart Pansy punch around the page set.  I have always loved pansies and I fell in love with this design - I am sure you will see it in many future projects!

When I made the card base I ended up with a one inch strip just sitting on my table - so I had to try the punch on it!  Here you can see the design I made by punching the strip from both sides evenly.

Then I started to experiment with different widths of paper strips.  The example at the top is a one inch strip and the one on the bottom is a one and a quarter inch strip.

I tried the punch on some DCWV glitter cardstock and it worked well.  I trimmed the ends straight and then decided that it would be a better idea to try to curve the cuts to make the flower petals.

Here you can see another dark purple strip where I did not make the straight cut and trimmed around the petal ends for a more pleasing cut.

Here are all of the pieces for this card.  The dark purple strip is 1.25 x 4.25 inches.  The pink cardstock is cut at 3 x 4 inches with two corners rounded to match the card base and embossed with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder.  The pink glitter cardstock pansies are evenly centered and punched on both sides of a 1.25 inch strip and then trimmed.  The dark purple pansies are punched from a one inch strip of cardstock and trimmed.  The "love you" and the interlocked hearts are from the Cuttlebug Embossing and Die Set "Love Language."

 Here is the card with the base layers applied.  There are so many possibilities with this basic card form.

Here is a view of the assembled card flat on the table...

...and one more view of the card standing.

I got home after a long drive Tuesday so I can finally get caught up with a lot of pending projects and emails.  It will be nice to stay put for a while!