Aloha, all!
Have I mentioned that I've been traveling on the U. S. Mainland for the last week? And we'll not be home again for yet another week, and I'm missing our Hawaiian Garden! I especially miss that gorgeous Pink Hibiscus that you see lying on the table in front of today's greeting card share.
This Hibiscus is in a large bush just outside my kitchen window, and it blooms up a storm every day of the year! Oh, occasionally some little bug will get after it and we have to prune it pretty severely. But that's rare, and it comes back as big and seemingly more beautiful every time.
And it's because of this Hibiscus that I'm so very fond of the Stampin' Up! Stamp Set, Greenhouse Garden. Of course, here in Hawaii, we don't grow these lovelies in a greenhouse – they're all outdoors! But do you see how close in color our Hibiscus is to the Regal Rose that I've used in the stamp on the left of the card – and to the Regal Rose Card Stock that forms the background for the central stamped squares?
But the stamp set is retiring. Oh, my. This may be one of those sets that I decide I have to keep just because of our Hawaii Garden. It's perfect for scrap pages featuring the garden, and it will be hard to give it up.
We also have Hibiscus of other colors in our garden, including a Daffodil Delight-colored flower in the front garden, which is placed very close to the Real Red flower that is the most popular Hibiscus in our area of Hawaii. The yellow Hibiscus in our garden is the State Flower of Hawaii, and its center – or Stybus – is an orange not a red color. And our red Hibiscus has a red Stybus, which would not show up really well on a stamped image. So this is where artistic license comes in! But don't those flowers look lovely anyway?
The layout for this card is just a bit different from how I first envisioned it. I'd wanted to punch the stamped images with the 1-1/4" Square Punch. But the flowers were just a hair too large for them to be shown off nicely punched at 1-1/4." So I punched them with the 1-3/8" Square Punch, which meant that I had to cut the 1-1/2 squares for the mats by hand (well, by paper cutter!). I decided to leave the background rectangles (which I'd already cut) the same size and just squeeze those squares in there. When all was said and done, I decided I liked it just the way it came out!
Oh, and there's another retiring stamp set that I used for this card – the Heard from the Heart Stamp Set will retire at the end of this month, along with Green house Garden.
I still have almost another 4 weeks to use these beautiful stamps here on my blog – and you have that same amount of time to buy these stamp sets. And then they retire for good!
Here's a layout for this card. And don't forget that, if you have an image that's small enough, use that 1-1/4" Square Punch for the stamped image and the 1-3/8" Square Punch for the mat – it makes the card a LOT easier to make. And a lot more fun to make, too!
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