PPA 98 Hops for Father's Day

Happy Father's day to my wonderful husband Chris.  He is the very best father that I know and we all love him bunches!  Chris is a big Craft Beer fan.  His hobby is brewing beer and has gone so far as to plant his own Hop plants, which he uses in his beer.  When I was thinking about what type of card to make him, I immediately thought about incorporating his hobby into the card.  Here is what I came up with:

I attempted to make paper hops, and boy was it difficult!  I ended up using the Build a Blossom punch with the smallest two punches in old olive, then crumpled, separated, and sponged them with garden green.  I just layered them on top of each other for that comb look.  I am not thrilled with how they turned out, but I think they look enough like a real hop to get the idea.

I used two great tools for today's card, the PPA 98 sketch and my color coach.  Both items helped me along great.  The sketch was perfect, and the colors Garden Green, Chocolate Chip, More Mustard, and Old Olive are just right for a masculine card.

Here is a picture of a real hop plant and it's leaves.  It is actually a vine and are very pretty and delicate.  Nature is the prettiest, and is hard to duplicate.

This is a 5x5 card, I crimped my garden green DSP from the Patterns DSP stack and layered it on a piece of garden green CS.  The more mustard square is embossed with the big shot and square lattice EF.  The hops and leaves are made with the build a blossom punch, and the sentiment is the retired Something to Celebrate stamp set, stamped in very vanilla craft ink and punched out with a large oval punch.  A very CAS card that showcases the hops.  So what do you think?  I love to read your comments, so please leave them!  Enjoy.