The Greetery {Spring Mix Celebrations}

Hello and welcome, friends! I hope you're having a wonderful week! It's Spring Break for my elementary school kiddos, but the weather has been CHILLY; hopefully we'll get a chance to enjoy the outdoors before the week is through! Since I woke up to hail on the ground, I decided to cozy up and create a few birthday cards for my stash. I have quite a few birthday cards, but they aren't my favorites so they keep getting passed up. These will get used in a jiff, though, because I just love how they turned out!

I cut up an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of white cardstock into 4 A2 sized panels and then stenciled and stamped each of them using the Print Shop: Spring Mix Stamp + Stencil. I kept all of the colors the same on each panel for ease, but swapped out the flower colors on each panel when  I used the last stencil in the series. It's amazing how just switching that one color can really change the feel of each of the panels. Once all of the stenciling/stamping was done, I used the Print Shop: Spring Mix Die to cut each panel out.

I also die cut a few extra stand-alone blooms for each card so I could layer them for a fuller, more detailed look. I used a few flowers from the Flower Bits mix to glue to the centers of select flowers; the layered flowers and two of the pink flowers in the top right and bottom left corner. 

Each of the die cut panels is added to an A2 card base using foam squares. Before I added the panels, I blended some Aqua Mist ink around the top of each card base as well as some ink splatter. I absolutely love the sentiments that are included in the Spring Mix stamp set, but I haven't used the beautiful sentiments in the Birthday Blooms Stamp Set (which happens to be on sale), for a while and I think they're the perfect choice!

In hindsight, I should have created 5 panels since there are 5 bold sentiments in the Birthday Blooms stamp set, but I didn't, so I chose "Wish, Birthday, Happy, and Celebrate". I die cut each of the 4 outlines using the Birthday Blooms Die and then used my Mini MISTI to stamp each of the sentiments.

Each of the 4 accent sentiments are heat embossed in white onto strips of black cardstock. I used foam squares to pop both the large word and the black strip onto the stenciled panels.

I forgot to mention that I also added some ink splatter to each of the layered blooms using my old SU! Color Spritzing Tool. I used a dark purple marker on each of the flowers, which resulted in a different look for each card.

I had so much fun creating matching envelopes for my stationery set for the release, so I decided to make some for each of the four cards. I used the Flappable Stencil collection to create a gingham design for each card (simply turn the striped stencil upside down). I chose to stencil them with the same shade of ink as the layered flowers, with the exception of the robin's egg blue card.

I selectively inked a portion of one of the sentiments from the Handmade Labels Stamp Set for each of the envelope flaps. These particular sentiments were created especially for the Nouveau Notes A2 Envelopes, so they are a little larger than would fit on these envelopes. I didn't let the large size get in my way, though; I simply used a sticky note to cover up the part I didn't want to have ink and then removed it before stamping....easy peasy!

I am thrilled with how cute the stenciled envelopes look with the cards! I was worried that the fonts would clash, but I think that they look just fine!

While I chose to make these for my own stash, these would make a great gift packaged up in the Stationery Box! You could even swap out some of the sentiments by using the Blessed Blooms Stamp Set to make it more of an all-occasion stationery set.

I had so much fun creating these cards to share with you today!  I hope you get some creative time of your own; it sure does the soul some good! Thanks for fluttering by!