A sunflower that grows on you !

Many, many years ago (at least 10 I think) my son James went to a birthday party for my friend dear friend Lena's youngest daughter Emilie whose birthday falls in the early spring.  As a party activity and take home treat she provided all the guests with a flower pot, which they decorated at the party and planted with a sunflower seed.  We brought it home and lo and behold it actually grew (we are not known for our green thumbs here so we were pretty amazed).  By the time we went on holidays at the end of August it was about 3ft high.  Unfortunately it didn't survive the 2 weeks of drought while we were away and had to be given a proper burial once we returned, but I don't think any of us have ever forgotten the excitement of that summer watching it grow almost visibly each day.  What a great take home treat - how many plastic yo-yos, superballs etc.,  have given such a wonderful memory not just to the young child who attended the party but to his entire family.  But then she is pretty clever my friend Lena !!!

If you looked a ways back on my blog, you'd see I've been trying to create an interactive sunflower card that could actually grow.  Previously I tried a double slider card, but this was a bit clumsy.  Well yesterday I had an idea based on a card by Tara Cardwell who did the July Friendly Feature spot over at the WMS Blog recently.  It's such a simple idea - the type that makes you kick yourself and say why didn't I think of that!  She did it with a Russian nesting doll, but I realised yesterday that it could work for my sunflower dilemma too, so thank you Tara. 

I started with a 5x7 card base which had the fold on the short axis not the long axis.  I cut down an A3 sheet of white card to 5x14" (12.5 x 35 cm).  This was 300gsm card stock, quite sturdy so it needed to be scored first.  I scored it in the middle for a tent fold and then folded the front in half again.  I placed the sunflower on the top and the flower pot (a truncated Spellbinders Banner overstamped with a distressed spots stamp from AladinE) on the bottom.   

Naturally I had to do something with all that white space first.  So I cut some clouds (Memory Box Marshmallow Clouds) and used these as a mask to create a cloud bank with Broken China DI.  This was my first ever attempt at this technique, so I started off a bit scratchy but eventually got the hang of it I think.  

A stem, a couple of leaves from a Spellbinder's Leaves and Acorn set and some grass and I had me a fairly instant sunflower.  Despite having a Sizzix Original Grass die and a Martha Stewart edge punch I used the Marianne D. Icicles die for grass because I was so hot I couldn't afford the energy required to root these out and could lay my hands on the latter immediately.  I only wish I could have laid my hands on some real icicles this afternoon (had to resist the urge to climb into the freezer for a spell) and ended up at my friend Bethia's house with a wet towel draped around my neck for most of the afternoon.  The card is for her mum's birthday next month.

I did add a "Happy Birthday" sentiment to the top left corner (had to hide my shaky start to cloud bank building) though didn't get an opportunity to take a photo afterwards, so I'm entering it into the Seize the Birthday Challenge.  

Have a great day, thanks for stopping by