The Grown Up Version

So for the grown up version of this card (and this, the original one) I put the bug stamps away, and decided instead to use the big flower from the Eastern Blooms set.  The design of the card was exactly the same again, just the colours (this time tangerine tango, more mustard, so saffron and old olive) and stamps changed, and this time I left off the brads.

The tango squares were punched from crimped card, and I used the mat pack to piece around the edges of the mustard squares.  To add even more textural interest I added a fun centre to those flowers.  First I used my cropadile and punched holes in a scrap of saffron card.  Next I gathered up all those little punched circles.  They do come out with a slight bend in them, and usually I would flatten them off, but for this project I decided to leave them as they were, to help with the texture.  I decided that crystal effects would be the best adhesive to use and initially planned to put a blob on the centre of the flowers and then cover it with the saffron circles.  I discovered that although they were holding fine, it wasn't as easy to stack them all up in a pile, the way I wanted.  Since I was making this up as I went along anyway (are you surprised?!) I decided to turn these squares into textured, glossy tiles instead, by covering that little pile of saffron circles, and the rest of the stamped square too, in crystal effects.  This way you can still see and touch the textured centre of the flowers, with no risk of anything falling off, and the high gloss centre doesn't look out of place, because the entire square looks the same.

I really like the way the tiles, and indeed the entire card has turned out, and will definitely be adding this to my list of techniques to use again.