Love Card **The Art Studio @ SNR**

I have always been in awe of layouts and cards with wonderful layering and groups (or clustering) of items such as flowers, chipboard, trims, leaves and the like; so I have created many projects teaching myself how to create this same wonderful effect.  On this card, that I made for my parents anniversary, I will show you the thought process of putting together a cluster of flowers, jute, and leaves - a peak into the thought process of cluster creation.

First, start with the colors.  The wedding colors (as this is an anniversary card) were red, white, and silver, therefore the colors of the card came naturally.  I cut all the papers to size, distressed the edges with my scissors, and then inked them with dark brown distress ink.  I used a faux stitching technique with my pen around the white paper, and then glued everything down to my card (A2 size) so as I worked out the idea for the cluster the papers would not move around.

I took a portion of a 12x12 die cut silver glitter paper and placed it on top of the red banner as the base for my cluster.  This way my cluster is not free floating on my card.  You want to anchor your cluster to something, the corner of a picture, along a swirl, the edge of layers, and not just free floating on your page or layout.  I started with my cluster with a bow tied in jute, this gives such texture and contrast to the cluster.

At this point I started playing with different flowers and leaves that I had pulled from my stash that were the colors for the card.  I had pulled about 20-30 different flowers and leaves so I had plenty to play with knowing full well that not all were going to make it to the final project.  I layer them on top of each other, play with where they are placed, see if it looks good, if not I move it around or stop using it all together.  None of the flowers, leaves, or jute are glued down in this process so I can play as much as I like.

At this point I am not liking the way the smaller white flower on top looks. There is too much red and the smaller flower looks swallowed up by the cluster.  I changed it to the larger white flower, and it looks tons better.

Now the ribbon jute looks to small, you can't even tell it is a bow.  I could either change the bow to a different type of trim or ribbon or change tactics.  I played around with the jute and looking back at the previous picture I liked the loopy feel of the bow at the top of the white flower.  I made more loops and place the flower on that, awesome!

Much better, the loopy jute looks great.  Another part that bugged me were all the red flowers grouped together, you could not tell there were three separate flowers since they were so close in color.  So I brought the larger white flower from the back up in front of two of the other red flowers to break it up.  I also added a brad to the smaller red flower to attach it to the large white flower to make them a unit, this made it much easier to arrange the cluster (less individual pieces shifting around).  At this point I take a picture with my phone (just a quick snapshot) to see what the final look will be so as I take it all apart and start to glue it all down (I used a good craft glue like Martha Stewart craft glue) I can see where each part goes, no guessing.

Head on over to The Art Studio @ SNR to see more great creations!! 

 

Supplies

Cardstock - DCWV

Specialty Paper -  Imaginesance and CartaBella

Letter Stickers - Momenta

Embellishments - Prima and Canvas Corps

Ink - Ranger

Pen - Faber-Castell

Brad - Recollections

Adhesive - 3M and Martha Stewart

Enjoy!!