Quick catch up time....

Hello, how are you today?

According to the map on my blog quite a few of you are US citizens so Happy 4th July, hope you enjoy the festivities with family and friends.

I'm playing catch up today with these two cards. The first one I called 'Wisteria Lily' not very imaginative I know, I will try to do better! This card was made for a challenge over at Stamp TV (now that's unusual!) The challenge was to use blue, grey, amethyst, moss/pine, sand/brown. My green is probably a bit bright and my flowers started off quite a bit lighter but I didn't like them (oops). I do love the double lace punched border though and this ribbon is gorgeous it ties a great knot.

• Stamps: Gina K Elegant Flowers
• DP Basic Grey Wisteria, GKD Pure Luxury Pure White, pale lemon(sand) craft card
• Embellishments: Pale green rhinestones Kaiserscrapbook and pale lemon double sided satin ribbon.

The leaves I stamped and cut out to raise them on the card with foam tabs.

"It's Time..."

The second card earned me lots of comments when I posted it to the gallery at STV. It was made for Kathy's sketch challenge.

• Stamp: GKD Eclectic Summer.
• Paper: Pale lemon, soft brown Craft Card. DP GKD Digi paper from Elegant Flowers Kit

The Pale Lemon card was trimmed to 11.5 x 4.25 Inches and folded in half to give me a tall slim card. I pierced around the edge (using my sewing machine without thread.... sh don't tell anyone).

The soft brown card was embossed using a Cuttlebug Swirls and birds folder(1st element).

2nd element was to attach the digital dp to some pale lemon card and sew a zig zag using the sewing machine.

3rd element should have been a smaller rectangle with a stamped image to sit above the 2nd element. Now I did this but didn't like it - too much cream card showing I think so off it came!!

I need to back up a bit - The balloon was stamped onto two different but co-ordinating scraps of dp. then I trimmed out every other segment (down to just above the basket) on one stamped image and alternated them on the second. Then it was just a case of sticking them together to alternate the segments. I just trimmed around the image and attached it using foam tabs to the front of the card at a slight angle.

The strip across the front had some household string crossed around it (supposed to look a bit like the ropes on a hot air balloon!). This just left a sentiment and mine was computer generated and printed onto some more of the pale lemon card.

Now the thing is...... when I took the picture outside the sun was out and it cast a shadow behind the image!!!! which actually made it look really good I think. My friend Kerrie said that taking a picture with the card standing on some quilt wadding made it look like the card was sitting on a cloud - now that might have helped too - I didn't even consider this until she mentioned it, I just wanted something white that was flexible to hang over the back of an outside chair. Whatever, people seemed to like this card, as I say it got quite a lot of comments and I'm not about to complain.

OK that's it I'm off to bed. Have a great week-end,

Till next time.......