Thrifty cardmaking

Here is the anniversary card I made for my parents. I like to use what I have around the house, so I used one of my old encyclopedia pages as a background. I stamped it with a rubber stamp and gold ink, (the stamping doesn't show up that well in the photo.)

For the lovely little brass butterfly charms, I used a tomato paste tube and a paper punch. Yes, I did say tomato paste tube! If you want more details how I did this you can find out in this tutorial. The vintage couple dancing is from the graphics fairy.

For the flowers, I used my lovely new petal pairs punches from Tonic Studios. But I decided to be awkward and not just use them in pairs like your supposed to. For two of the flowers I punched two with one punch and one with another and fitted all three layers together. For the third flower, I used three different punches and punched out four flowers and although it was fiddly, I managed to fit four layers together and I really like the effect. You could make a whole lot of pretty flower embellishments with a few scraps of paper and these clever little punches. Quite economical really. I used a heart shape punch for the leaves and drew the veins with a pencil. The butterfly wings were cut from my butterfly punch.

..and because it's nice to share...here is one of my encyclopedia pages I scanned for you to use in collage or cardmaking. Such a fun image! I think I might use this on a card very soon.