Summery Strawberry Leaves!

Yesterday was the first day of summer. . .yaay! It finally looks like it might be warming up here in the frozen tundra of Idaho . . . although last week there was a morning frost that surely would have killed off my garden if I had planted one this year. I was really hoping for some fresh corn and beans and squash this year but we have had a long cold spring and the planting never got done. Luckily, the strawberry patch comes back every year weather we plant it or not. It is nestled up at the corner of the house where it stayed warmer than other spots and so it is going strong - if we can keep the birds out of the berries we should be in luck for some home made jam and strawberry shortcake! Oh, I hope so!

A while back the gals at OWH were kind enough to share this video on making flowers that look just like pansies. I liked it so much that I spent a morning making piles of paper pansies and that was fun. Since that time I have been looking for inspiration in other foilage. I haven't yet figured out how to make paper columbines or lillies. :) Maybe soon. I did however spend some time looking at the strawberry patch and made this little strawberry card.

Here is a little tut so that you could make your own strawberry leaves - it's really pretty simple.

I cut my strawberries out using my Cricut - Indie Art. Maybe you have that one - or you could hand cut some strawberres pretty easily. I actually made use of my Spring 2010 cartridge and cut out these leaves - they are the scalloped easter eggs. Another way that this could be done would be to just cut egg shapes or ovals and use scalloped scissors to cut the edges.

Next I took the "leaves" and put them in my trimmer and scored down the center. Using the top score mark as a focal point, I scored outward from the same place to about every other scallop. When finished, you simply fold these little score marks gently to give your leaf some shape. You could distress the edges and score marks a little to give them some definition. I adhered the leaves with some flat dots at the far edges and some dimensional dots in the middle so that they pop up nicely from the card. If you are needing my measurements, the strawberries on this card were cut at 2" and 1.5" and the leaves were also cut at 2.5" and 1.5"

Some additional card measurements are 4" x 5.25" for the green mat and 3.75 x 5" for the striped mat. Other materials are a small piece of random green floral wire and a flora-doodle flower. I distressed the edges of the strawberries and the leaves with chalk. See that white scalloped mat that the berries are on? That's not a nestie or a cricut cut circle - no, nothing as snazzy as that. I picked up a stack of paper coasters for a dollar - the kind that they use in cafes and restaurants to set your drink on. There must be a hundred of them in the stack and they make a very nice embossed background for a card. Quick and easy!

I think that I will go weed the berry patch a little while it is nice outside - and then maybe back to making some more summery cards!

Are you playing along with the card recipe project? Here is another recipe for your collection. . . enjoy!