Start with old floral greetings cards, wallpaper, or floral printed scrapbook paper (you need two or more copies of each individual flower). Take scissors and cut out individual flowers and leaves (this is good busy work to do while watching television). When it comes to assemble the card, you can arrange you cutouts to your pleasing, then use pop dot foam adhesives to layer leaves and petals over your base to give the bouquet a three-dimensional quality.

These cards are great for all kinds of celebrations, such as birthdays, Valentine's Day, Easter, Mother's Day or just to let someone special know you are thinking about them.

1. Cut the background paper the same size as the front of the card blank. Use your adhesive of choice to affix the background paper to the card blank.

2. We used Fiskar's lace border punch to make the top and bottom border strips. The strips we used are actually the scraps from the lace punch, we didn't actually use the lace design, so we still have those scraps for another project (one the reasons the Fiskar's lace design border punch is one of my favorite tools -- you get two punched design elements for the price of 1). Don't have a border punch? Use decorative scissors to cut border strips or use border stickers. Apply adhesive of choice to the border strips and apply to the top and bottom short edges of the card.

3. Cut hearts in graduating sizes from the contrasting papers. These will form the "vase" for the paper flower bouquet. Use adhesives to stack the hearts as in the photo.

Note: You can give the hearts some dimension by using pop dot adhesive between the layers.

Lacy Heart Border: In the photo above, the 2nd layer of the heart element shows a lacy bordered heart. To make this, we used a narrow strip of paper, punched along one edge with the Fiskar's heart design border punch to make a lace border on the heart cutout underneath it in the stack. To do this, border punch a strip of paper and cut it to a width just wider than the punched design. Apply a strong adhesive to the back of the heart cut out. Gently apply the punched strip to the underside of the edge of the heart cup out, curving and folding the lacy border as needed. It may take additional strips to entirely go around the heart cutout, depending on the size you choose. No problem, just hide the seam in the folds.

4. Affix the stacked heart element to the card by applying adhesive to 3 sides only. Leaving the top edge loose allows you to tuck the paper flowers inside for more natural look.

NOTE ON THE FLOWERS:
The steps below show how make the three dimensional bouquet. While the photos show flowers from a different design in this series, the technique is the same for this card as well.

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Step 5. Begin arranging your flowers by placing a flat base layer down with regular adhesives (as opposed to pop dots). You will begin to layer upon this in the next step, but right now you are created the underlying base layer of flowers. While photo #5 shows flowers being arranged "in a narrow rimmed vase" for another card design in this series, the technique for building the floral bouquet in this card is essentially the same, except that in this card, the flowers are growling out the heart shaped vase in a more freeform fashion.	Step 6. Look at your base and decide where you will layer other flowers and/or individual petals and leaves. Cut out the necessary parts and pieces and attach pop dots to the backs of these elements. FRUGAL TIP: You can use pieces of the backing as well as the dots when using foam backed adhesives (as shown above) -- no waste!

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Step 7. Start building three dimensional layers by sticking the pop-dotted elements over the base flowers. Continue adding and layering until you are happy with the finished look of the bouquet. Step 8. If desired, layer a couple of butterfly cutouts the same way you did the flowers to make a 3-D flying insect admiring your bouquet.	* BORDER PUNCH INFO AND ALTERNATIVES We used Fiskar's lace design border punch. You could just as easily use other border punch designs. Don't have a border punch? Use decorative scissors to cut border strips or use border stickers. Click here to browse the border punch selection at Amazon.com.

MORE 3-D FLORAL GREETING CARDS Use this technique to make more great three dimensional floral greeting cards. Click here for details and instructions Shop for Paper Crafting Supplies at Amazon.com.