Flamingo Card

Where do you find your inspiration? I sometimes look at objects and try to imagine creating various paper crafts from them. Have you ever been inspired by something simple, like say…a tissue box? This flamingo card is inspired by one that I had around the house, and I had to try and recreate it with the vibrant CutCardStock colors!

For this card, I pulled together an assortment of colors from my stash, then determined that the Basis Soft Pink would be the best backdrop for my card front, and cut this piece as a 5″ by 6.5″ base.

I also started to sort through my library of die cuts to create the tropical theme on the tissue box, so my dies are from all sorts of sets I have at home.

I decided that I would hand-cut the swirled layers in the background, so for this, I used the Pearlized Strawberry Cream paper and used scissors to cut large curves and swirls. I laid these down first on the Basis Soft Pink panel.

My next layer was the largest palm leaf cut. I cut these in the PopTone Blue Raspberry and filled in the big gaps on the panel. Just a tip…if you’re creating backdrops like this, either in dies or stamps, it’s helpful to work from biggest to smallest.

My cuts lay over the edge at times, and that helps your pattern look more natural. We’ll deal with the excess in a minute!

Layer three was a smaller leaf cut, and this color is Stardream Metallic Aquamarine. These leaves fill in the smaller gaps and give more coverage.

For the flamingo, I originally thought about using a smaller die cut, as you saw in the first photo. But the more I looked at the tissue box, the more I thought that it should be the focal point.

Thankfully I had a Sizzix swan die cut that did the trick!

This is cut from the Amaranth Pink paper. I cut a couple pieces for layers and hand-trimmed the wings to fit the image better, then added the beak pieces separately. These are done in Basis Soft Pink and DCS Black Glitter.

Once you have all the white space filled, take scissors and trim off the excess. Now this looks like it’s printed paper!

The diecut sentiment is also done with DCS Black Glitter and backed by a shadow of Basis White. Both images are raised with some dimensional foam pieces and applied to the panel.

A final touch was to add some clear enamel dots to look like water droplets. Admittedly, it wasn’t on the tissue box. But I think it ends up cuter than the original!

I hope today’s post encourages you to find inspiration everywhere! If you feel inspired to try this project, I hope you consider sharing it with us on the Creating With Card Stock Facebook page. Thanks for joining me today!