Card and Trash Bag Flower, with Lifestyle Crafts

Lifestyle Crafts recently sent me some new dies to try out from their dies released at the January CHA  (Craft and Hobby Association)! I chose to receive the:

labels ■    nesting flower ■    doily envelope liners ■    nesting card templates

I liked that these were all basic dies that could be used in lots of ways over and over. I started with the nesting flower die. The instructions call for tissue paper, but I wanted something a little more durable so I used a white trash bag. I tested both the standard kitchen bag and a plastic bag from the grocery store. The grocery store bag was less stretchy and cut much better. For best results, from bottom to top I layered the cutting platform, 2 pieces of plastic bag, 2 thin pieces of paper (or 1 thicker piece), then the cutting mat. Whether using tissue paper or plastic bag, you’ll need around to cut around 4 items from each of the 6 shapes included with the nesting flower set. If you don’t have the dies, cut approximately 24 circles with varied edges in various sizes from smaller to larger.

Then I used a needle and thread to stitch all the layers together and sew on a button. I finished it off by gluing a felt circle to the middle of the flower. I used the flower to top a gift box and used the label die to cut a label out of felt and stitched “Mom” on it to complete the gift wrapping.

The nesting cards come with 17 shapes so it’s a really versatile set. I used two rectangles to make the front of a card and then decorated it all with shapes from the nesting flower set. The doily envelope liner comes with 2 dies, one large and one small. It’s a fast and easy way to dress up an envelope.

As always, for 20% off your Lifestyle Crafts purchase, use the code CRAFTBUDS. And in other news, I’ve been doing some baby-related sewing so new free patterns and tutorials are coming up soon!