By Mary Gillingham: A Closer Look At... Julie Loves Paisley and Petals

Hi Everyone! I hope you've all had a fantastic bank holiday weekend! Did anyone catch Julie Hickey's shows on Create and Craft yesterday? She did such a good job even though she was poorly!

This new collection was right up my street and I always feel so grateful to be on the design team and get to make samples with new collections before they go to sale. This kit reminded me of the retro daisy Craftwork Cards used to feature in a lot of their products many moons ago but revamped and in a truly Julie style.

The stamps in this collection were out of this world, I even emailed Steph (Senior Designer at CWC) to tell her how much I loved them! They all work so well together, you can create so many different stamping combinations, using the colour combination from the Paisley and Petals collection or using different colour combinations, you can achieve so many different looks. This is what the stamps look like:

So I thought I'd show you a few of my finished sample cards and give you a few ideas on how I created them!

Starting with a nice easy card, I've made this card by cutting out the individual petals from the patterned paper and sticking then to the back of the sentiment, turning the sentiment into a main focal point on my card. I've used one of the tiny prints for the background and a strip of ribbon across the front the attached the sunflower I've made to the bottom right. This allows enough space to see the tiny print on the patterned paper.

Here, I stamped out the large and small flowers several times in colours of ink pad matching the collection and cut them out.

I've also used a large circle die to cut a large central aperture in the front of my card and then laid the flowers over the aperture so all the flowers overlap slightly but leave gaps. I've stamped a few paisley images around the edge of the aperture then adhered the flowers to the front of the card.

Stamp a sentiment on white card and mount onto a piece of the blue floral patterned paper for the front of the card. I've used a large piece of the same blue floral patterned paper on the inside of the card and tied ribbon down the spine of the card.

As a finishing touch I've used some liquid pearls to accent the flowers.

For this card I've used one of the sentiment postcards and layered it onto the deep blue paisley paper.

I've the cut out some of the beautiful hand illustrated blooms from the mustard colour paper and added these to the front of the card as if they're coming in from the edge of the card.

A few dots of gold liquid pearls around the blooms ties it all together nicely!

I've used a large circle die to cut an aperture in the front of my card, slightly larger than the embossed daisy tag. I've covered the front in the lovely daisy paper and cut out the aperture.

I've then taken a length of white thread and secured it between a sandwich of two of the embossed daisy tags. Secure each end of thread to the inside of your card. Then cut a square of white card slightly smaller than your card and cut the same size aperture from it. This will go on the inside of your card and hide the tails of the thread!

I've added some soft pink ink, sentiments and bows the spinning element of the card and then a square of contrasting patterned paper on the inside of the card.

Here's some more of my finished sample cards with this collection, if you'd like to know how any of them were made please ask, I'd be only too happy to explain :-)