Thank You from the Heart

Awhile ago, my dear friend Kelly of Kreative Korner By Kelly surprised me with a very special rak of Nellie Snellen flower punches. Kelly often uses the amazing flowers she creates with these punches as embellishments on her beautiful cards and I have always been intrigued by them. So you can imagine how excited and delighted I was to receive these punches. Without question, the first card I made with these punches had to be my thank you card for Kelly.

Here's a closeup of what these flowers look like: Each Nellie Snellen flower punch set includes two tools, one to punch out the flower shape, and the second to emboss the texture onto the petals. The stamen is a separate punch. For my flowers, I used plain white cardstock spritzed with Maya Mists (Pink Grapefruit Metallic on the flowers, Gold Metallic for the stamens).

My card to Kelly had to be extra special, but at first I couldn't decide whether I wanted to do another easel card or a shaped card. Then I came across this lovely folded heart card created and posted by Cami on her blog, Capture A Heart. I knew then I wanted to try and incorporate both types of card into one. Using Design Studio, I welded together a cutfile for a re-sizeable scallop heart originally created by Okielady to make my shaped card and frame. Used the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder to emboss the frame, then weaved strips of nylon ribbon behind it."Thank you" cut on the front is from the Beyond Birthdays cartridge, and I used my Fiskars hand punch for the tiny hearts around the edge of the heart.

On the inside, I put my first sentiment and embellished with flatback pearls and flourish cuts from a Sizzlets set. The heart shaped card was then adhered to the front of an easel card, which opens to reveal the second sentiment.
Here, I used the Nestabilities Labels Four die, a Sizzix swirls die, and Martha Stewart edge punch. The "my friend" cut was created in MTC using Lettering Delights LD Elegance font.

And finally, the finished card standing in its easel position.

This was quite a challenge for me, as I am always more comfortable making cards of a more whimsical nature. But this time I felt I needed to go outside my comfort zone to try and express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude because it was for such a very, very special friend.