Hedgehog – The Art of Cobwebs

As any gardener will tell you, gardening doesn’t stop when the summer sun does, and it was this thought that made me realise that there were very few gardening or ‘plant growing’ cards for gardeners in the autumn/winter months to be seen on the high street (or on hand-made card makers blogs that I’ve come across) at these times of year, so I thought I’d make some cards for those of us who garden and pot all year round!

Card one:

I decided upon warm terracotta and copper tones for this first card and hand painted the little pots on some Neenah card then cut them out and shaped them (just with my fingers) to give them that dimensional look.

The deep ruby-red flower is made from felt with three glass beads in the centre, and I teamed it with two lovely burnt orange skeleton leaves.

The little Bumble Bee actually started off life as a photo corner – ones which I’ve had for a gazillion years! (ok, I might be stretching that a little, but I’ve had them so long that I can’t even remember when I bought them nor where from).

The rim of the pot is made from coppery coloured corrugated card with the addition of a little brown and dotty ribbon, which brings a bit of happy whimsy to the pot rim.

I added a little smile to the inside by adding another hand painted pot, to which I added a ‘seed packet’ – cut from some cardstock which had little seed packets all over the page. I fixed the seed packet at an angle so that I could ‘sprinkle’ seeds falling out of the packet and into the pot. The addition of the sentiment ‘Sow Lovely’ finished the little inside scene off.

Card number two:

The second card began life in the same way (as a Craft Card terracotta pot shaped base) but for this card I cut out papers for the rim and the base then coloured them up so that the pot took on a much deeper colour than a normal terracotta pot in order to give it a more autumnal feel. I added three half daisies along the rim (with Candi to the centres) and added the Happy Birthday sentiment so that they looked as if they were tucked behind it.

The watering can at the bottom of the card is actually a wooden one, which I coloured silver by using a silver marker pen, and added a flower to the centre. The dragonfly, (like the bumble bee in the first card), began life as a photo corner – and again, I’ve had them for ever so can’t tell you where I bought them from – but they’re so adorable and I’ve used them lots of times. I hope that I can still get those from somewhere because I’ll buy them in a heartbeat. They’re perfect for that little accent when you need one).

This time, the inside of the card was a pop up – in the shape of some flowers….

These flowers started life as:

…7 x 2″ square pieces of decorative cardstock, folded and then trimmed to shape, then cut, coloured . . .

. . . and then glued to turn them into ‘cone’ shaped flowers . . .

Then they’re re-folded and glued together in a specific way in order to make them close up and open again as ‘one’ pop up. Once the flowers were in place I added the little heart shaped sentiment to the inside, on a belly bar, over some printed gardening themed text paper.

And that’s all there is to it!

Two cards, both really simple, but both with friendly little smiles to brighten the birthday of someone who still likes to garden even when the sun isn’t there!

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit and check out my blog, it’s really lovely to see you here!