Gallery Idol- Round 3!

Wow, things are really starting to heat up! I cannot believe that I have made it this far in the Gallery Idol competition. I can only hope that this card helps me make it to top 5! I haven't seen the other entries yet, but I can bet they are amazing.

The theme for this round is fabric. Luckily, I have a pretty extensive fabric scrap collection. I chose a fun green print to become the leaves of my fern. Here's the card:

Now, it might be tough to see in that above photo, but each leaf is puffy!

I love to play with dimension in my cards, so I wanted this one to be soft and puffy. Here's what I did:

1. Start with 3 layers- Die cut cardstock for the card's front panel, fabric scrap, and a scrap piece of cardstock slightly smaller than the front panel.
2. This next picture shows the bottom 3 leaves puffed up already. I took some "cluster fiber" (it's stuffing for toys and pillows)....
...then placed it in between the fabric layer and the scrap cardstock layer, making sure to shove it in where the die-cut sections were so it filled that area.
3. Once that was done, I pressed the two cardstock pieces together, trapping the stuffing inside. Do you see the puff it makes?
4. (sorry- no picture for this step) I carefully sewed around each puffy leaf with my sewing machine (I used white thread), making sure to stay pretty close to the die cut. I didn't want any of my stuffing to escape!

That was it! Pretty easy, once I figured out the best way to do it. I just LOVE this technique now- I've never seen it done before (although I'm sure it has been), but now I want to try with other die-cut shapes!

Here's a close-up of the finished card:

Thanks so much for checking out my round 3 entry! Please go here to vote :)