Quilled sunflower birthday pop up card

HB136

I wanted to blog about this card for a month now......made this one in May....but only now in June, I have the time to blog about it. I've just finished making a lot of raya cards and I just had to take a short break to blog about this card first before blogging about the raya cards some time this week. Need to make time to blog too right? :)

I had a great time making this one...especially the part where I get to make the quilled sunflowers. I've done quilled sunflowers before but they were simpler and not as many as I did for this new card. When I got a request from my customer, he told me that he actually loved my quilled sunflower card design that I did some years ago. The only thing he wanted to see differently in the new card is MORE SUNFLOWERS!!! That's all. HEHE! And that's what I tried my best to do.....made 6 of them and struggled to decide how to arrange 6 of them on that card, which was not that big.....only half the size of an A4 paper.

I told him that I could not make the card design exactly like the old one because we as designers will always tend to change our ways of designing over the years and will try to make the design more current to what we love to do at the moment. I'm glad he agreed and let me do it my way. I've always enjoyed accepting orders from customers who gives me the freedom to design. So it doesn't feel so stressful when I'm designing the card itself.

To start making the quilled sunflowers, I begin with making the fringed center. To make the center part of the sunflowers, I had to cut the fringe with the scissors. Gosh that was a real challenge to do! I had to test all my scissors to see which one felt the most comfortable using when making the fringe because it's going to take a long time to cut them one by one. Finally I felt like this scissors was the most comfortable for me.

I'm beginning to really enjoy using the calligraphy pen! And the ink!! Love the ink!! I think from now onwards, I'll never buy new coloured pens anymore. Because using the calligraphy pen and ink is much more fun to use plus the ink don't smudge at all once it is dried on paper. I love that! My writing may not be great but at least I'm working on it....it will definitely improve over time. The more practice I have with it, the better I'll get at it, God willing 😀.

Sewing the beads on the thick card stock was absolutely the most exciting thing for me to do! I love doing this a whole lot even though it takes a long time to complete! Love looking at it glittering beads once they are all sewn on the paper. The possibilities are endless with beads. I would love to experiment more on this technique when I have the time. I have lots of beads to use up and what more better way than to use them for my handmade cards. If you would like to give it a try too, make sure you get yourself the good quality beads that are the same in size. This is because you want the line of beads to look pretty on the card. You wouldn't want the beads to have different shapes and sizes....😉.

Love making the quilled lady bugs too! They are a cute addition to any flower arrangements! They make the flower arrangement look less boring. Adds excitement to it! Haha!

Heart shaped quilling leaves! I wanted to make the leaves to look different from the ones I made for the old sunflower card design, so I opted to make them this way. It's a lot easier too! LOL!

I changed the pop up sunflowers inside the card too.....anything to make it look different from the old design. I used those craft punches that you can see from the photo above to make those sunflowers. It's easy to make them when you have the right tools. Been keeping that sun shape craft punch for a long time now, at least now it is put to good use.

Do check out the video of the sunflower card below! Thank you!