Paper Piecing with Batik Boutique

I have seen a number of cards that use paper piecing techniques, and they can become quite intricate.  While I admire the technique, I don’t think that I have the patience for all of that intricate detail.  That is, I didn’t until I saw a card designed by a teammate of mine, Donna Leonard.  She created a truly stunning card for a team blog hop that had enough paper-piecing to be beautiful – but not enough to send me to the New Hampshire State Home for the Bewildered!  So, I have CASEd her beautiful card today!

The card starts with the Stampin’ Up! Batik Boutique Bundle and uses both the stamps and the dies.  In addition, I always recommend the use of the Stamparatus or another stamp placement tool when using two-step stamps.  (Two-step stamps are sets that are designed with outlines and fillings in two separate stamps.  They combine perfectly to allow you to create an image and color it in quickly with a complementary color using the separate stamp.

The card cuts are as follows:

I prepared the card base and mounted the 2021-2023 Polished Pink In color DSP on the card face.  (You will need another piece of this paper if you choose to use it to decorate the envelope.) 

I decided to work on the paper piecing early on – just in case this technique and I were not going to find peace with each other!

The Batik Boutique dies were needed to cut out the large flower.  The dies included the background layer, the intricate floral die, the smaller flower die and the lotus flower die, along with the leaves.

I cut them out as follows, including 2 leaves cut from Mint Macaron cardstock.

I assembled the flower starting from the large solid image cut from Polished Pink cardstock and working forward.  I was honestly fairly surprised that it was as simple as it turned out to be.  In fact, the method made a lot of sense, and it didn’t take nearly the amount of time that I had anticipated!

Once the flower image was pieced together and glued, I stamped the “Hello” sentiment to the Basic White panel, using Night of Navy ink with the “Hello” stamp from the Big Wishes set.  Once that was done, I mounted the pieced flower, and the front panel was ready to mount and decorate with the pink 2020-2022 In Color Enamel Dots.

My attention then turned to the inside panel.  My colleague, Donna Leonard, had decorated the inside of the card with more detail than I normally do.  But I really liked her card very much and decided that I would give it a try.  Using the Batik Boutique stamps, I stamped the floral image using Night of Navy ink for the main flower and Polished Pink for the lotus part of the image.  I glued the Polished Pink strip underneath and a sentiment from the In Your Words set to finish the inside panel.  Well…look at that! 

This is far more than I would normally do – but it was very pretty and very similar to Donna’s card.

I stamped the same image once again on the envelope and covered the envelope flap with a piece of the Polished Pink 2021-2023 In Color DSP.

I LOVE this stamp set and I’m thinking that you may see a few other designs later this month using this bundle.  It isn’t my usual choice – but I am really becoming a fan!

However, the color scheme of this card was inspired by the Color Hues Challenge #35 – Navy and Pink. This color combination is a favorite of mine. The crisp contrast of the colors seemed like a perfect combination for the Batik Boutique pattern.

Thank you so much for taking a look at today’s card!  Please let me know if you have any questions if my directions have missed any steps.  I am hoping that it might inspire you to try this technique if you haven’t already.  Paper piecing can be quite intimidating – but this design was not bad at all!

Here is a list of the supplies that I used in today’s card: