Blossom Tree

 I'm still persevering with my efforts to curb spending on crafty stash, apart of course from the essential consumables, and with this in mind I've come up with a card design based on on something I saw on TV just this week which almost had me hitting the 'buy now' button.  However I remembered that I had a tree die amongst my collection so this is my take on the card I saw demonstrated - only similar in that I've used a tree and some blossom but I'm glad I had a go.  I started by die cutting a cream oval and then die cut the tree into the centre (this tree has no outside cutting edge).  I then cut the same tree three times more from scraps of red, brown and green card and having backed the cream oval with another blue one I proceeded to collect as many of the 'fall out' die pieces as was practical and glued the red hearts and some of the larger leaves back into the spaces - the easiest piece to place was of  course the brown tree trunk.  That job done I then found a scrap of pink pearl card and cut out a selection of tiny flowers and adhered them to make the tree blossom.   Having decided to back the image with a slightly larger green oval I realised that what I should have done instead of using a piece of blue card behind the cream at the start,  I could have just used green in the first place. This way I could have avoided having to scrabble around popping the tiny leaves back into the tree outline and simply used the hearts and tree trunk - hindsight is wonderful isn't it!!  Finally I found some pink papers in my stash and added a sentiment to complete this card.

In case you are wondering, the die set which I so nearly bought is called Tree of Life from John Next Door - nothing like the one I've used but at least seeing it got my brain ticking over to come up with my own design based on the blossoming tree theme

Tree - die from My Favourite Things
Blossom - small flowers die set by John Next Door
Papers - from a couple of different magazine give-aways
Sentiment - produced in Word and die cut using SU die (Colour and Contour set)
Oval dies - Tonic