Bloom Where You're Planted

First of all, thanks for all of the recent comments and new followers (and of course my loyal fans who've been with me since the beginning)!  Can't wait to check out some new blogs...my google reader is loving the fresh faces!  My card today is for this week's Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge.

Question: How adorable is that row of flowers!?!?  Answer: On a scale of one to corgi, easily a 8.3.  I started by cutting the boxes out of a 1.75 x 5.5 strip of Riding Hood Red using an exacto knife and ruler.  The first box is 1.25x1.25, the second and third boxes are really just one box with a .25 border all around.  I used the squares that I had cut out to punch the tulips using Martha Stewart's tulip border punch, then trimmed the bottom to .25 inch under the flowers, and adhered it to the back of my window.  In the first square, one of the flowers was cut off, so I cut that whole flower out of the picture and used one of the skinnier flowers instead.    I cut the squares of October Afternoon patterned paper and adhered behind the flowers and window.

The sentiment is from Verve Floral Symphony, stamped in Versafine Smokey Gray and clear embossed onto SU Blush Blossom (after much frustration trying to emboss with black powder...it just did not play well with this stamp or cardstock!).  I added another strip of flowers, the swirls (from Autumn Leaves maybe?  I got it back when Walmart had a craft section!) in Memento Rhubarb, some pearls, and matted it with Nestabilities Big Scallops.  I stamped another flourish from the same set in black onto the dp and added some more pearls.Extreme closeup:
ETA: For some reason, I thought this card was missing something after I posted it.  So I cut out another big scallop rectangle and used the regular rectangle die to trace a window.  I cut it out, leaving a little more border at the bottom to cover the bottom of the flower strip.  Some careful gluing and I think it made it look really finished.  Isn't it nice when you try to add one final touch and it doesn't ruin the whole card?  

So does anyone else use Pandora? If you haven't tried it yet, be prepared to have your mind blown.  Put in a few favorite songs and/or artists and it makes a radio station based on the "music genome" of the songs you chose. It totally freaked me out while making this card by playing an obscure track that is one of my favorite songs of all time, from one of my favorite shows of all time.^[1]  Get out of my head Pandora!

Oh, and one more thing to completely blow your mind: did you know if you middle-click a link (on Windows/Linux, since I don't think there's a middle button on a Mac mouse), it automatically opens it in a new tab?  Go on, try it.  (maybe that link to one of the best shows ever in the above paragraph). You're welcome.
^[1] Yes, after finding this clip and watching it for about 20 seconds, I will now be watching the entire series again starting immediately if not sooner.