Designer Showcase: Flower Clustering

Hope you are all having a wonderful Wednesday! Cathy here with this week's Designer Showcase. Our theme this week is Flower Clustering.

Anupama shares this amazing page with us. She likes to combine fussy cut paper flowers along with Prima flowers.  She shares this as a great tip to stretch your scrapping budget. You can really help make a pack of Prima flowers last by mixing it up with some paper ones. You also get a really nice look.  Also note the way Anupama works in the curls of torn paper, lace and leaves.  On the opposite side of the page she places a rosette near the stitched lacing at the paper tear. Such a sweet detail.

Gael has shared this lovely page with us this week. All of the flowers are handmade from cardstock. And they are just drop, dead, gorgeous!  Gael did an amazing job of clustering the flowers in flow with the background printed paper from Prima.It's as if the flowers blossomed right out of the paper. I really love how she worked in the bridge and bird bath too. What a wonderful garden-like setting!

Lesley considers herself a "flower addict", she loves to cluster flowers. To help ensure that her albums do not get too full, she also uses the fussy cutting technique. This is a great way to include a grouping of flowers on your layout without adding too much bulk.  Also a great way to use that beautiful flowery paper that you just had to buy, but then aren't really sure how to use it.  Cut it up and cluster the flowers, you could get several projects out of just one sheet of paper!

Here is a digital page that I created a cluster of flowers as a border., I have to admit that I am not the greatest at clustering flowers. In fact, this is really one of my short-comings. So this clustering took quite a bit of time for me to get the layering and shadow depths just the way I wanted them.  Which leads me to a tip... when you create a digital flower cluster, and you're really happy with the results, save the layered file of the cluster as well as a .PNG file of the cluster. This will allow you to easily use that cluster again on another layout, saving you a whole lot of time!

Flower clustering is not just for layout. You can use this on other projects too.  This is a box that I altered using scrapbook papers and embellies.  I clustered some flowers on the lid. I tried to vary the sizes of flowers to include large, medium and small flowers.

You can also cluster flowers on cards. I wanted this card to have a vintage Victorian garden feel to it. I clustered these small rosettes together to create a topiary as the focal point on the card.

One of the best ways to branch out into flower clustering, is to just play. Set up several flowers for your project. Then move them about. Change the stacking order and angles of the flowers until you find an arrangement that is pleasing to you.  Most of all, just have fun creating!