Priscilla's Papercrafts: Sending Flowers

I have a friend who is struggling with family illness, so I wanted to send her a card. But since I ended up with some leftover pieces, I decided to create one more. So now I have two:

I love how they came out!

The Sending Flowers dies are a special-order item, not currently shown in a catalog. But I had gotten them and love the bright, cheery flowers, good for many occasions.

The dies are circles with flowers in the middle. I cut off the top part of the circle and fit my flowers behind a rectangle frame. Let's take a closer look:

I first cut the die with Call Me Clover cardstock so I had green stems, leaves and flowers. After trimming the circle I attached the stems to the back side of a Thick Whisper White frame cut with the Stitched Rectangles dies. Then I used the two flower dies (included in the set) with a variety of colors - Gorgeous Grape, Melon Mambo, Real Red, Pineapple Punch and Grapefruit Grove. I glued them to the flower tops, and then used a brand new embellishment - the Gilded Gems (coming in the upcoming Annual Catalog in May) for the flower centers.

Then the "basket". I had two sentiments and needed the baskets to be different sizes, so I used the Stitched Rectangles with Crumb Cake cardstock and then ran them through the Basket Weave embossing folder. A quick wrap with ribbon/bakers twine, and I was done with the front.

Layering these flowers against a plain white background wasn't very exciting, so I used a sponge dauber to swipe some Balmy Blue ink across the card base within the outline of the frame. Thought it came out great! Then the framed piece was adhered, using Dimensionals for some height.

Here are the two greetings, one, a "flagged" banner, and the other stamped directly on the card. Which do you like better?