Southern Gal

It's time for a new Southern Girls Challenge today. We are stoked to have Lacy Sunshine sponsor us again and the DT have all been given gorgeous stamps to use. The stamp I've used is called Emily's Kimono. I love this stamp. I knew when I spotted it, that it would make a lovely birthday card for my sister in law. She lived in Japan for a while and they have close ties there still, so it just seemed like a good fit. Our theme this time is 'You Spin Me Right Round Baby'. So we want to see creations featuring circles, circular dies, circles on your papers, circles generally! So here's my Oriental themed, circle card. The green circular mat was cut with a Marianne Design Creatables die and the pearl shimmer card was cut with an MFT Die-namics stitched circle stax die. Don't ya just love the little circular lanterns too?!

The lush papers are from Crafts Too, from their Oriental Paper Pack. They are all such lush designs, it was a bit of a trick to get two that might work okay together, because I really had my heart set on paper piecing this image. I chose the simpler design for the paper piecing, so that I could add shading with my Promarkers where it was needed, without it getting swamped by the pattern. I think it worked quite well. But it's 'very green', which I didn't originally set out to be my feature colour. But that was the paper that best leant itself to being paper pieced. I did want to use a stronger pattern for the background and it was a toss up between two. The other was also a green paper, which I think would have been colour overkill! But the pattern was beautiful. I decided to opt for the red, which I think made a lush contrast and with the fans kept the circular theme going. There is a lot of colour yes! So you sort of need to take in the 'little details' on this card.

Here is the divine Lacy Sunshine image all paper pieced and coloured up where appropriate with my Promarkers. I think I just got away with the patterns from the actual stamp blending with the patterns on the paper. I didn't add any colour to the stamp designs, as I thought it was best left as is. But I did shade heavily the folds and undersides of the Kimono. I also shaded heavily around her head on the umbrella. The fussy cutting on this image was intense! So she lost a few strands of very fine hair, which I had to hand draw back in (following as precisely as I could the original image) directly onto the pearl card mat. Phew, think I 'just' got away with that! I wanted her hair to be black, but I didn't want to use grey as the accent colour, as quite frankly, we older ladies, need no reminding that we're greying! So I opted for blues, which I think works incredibly well with dark hair. I've used it once before and really loved it. You can see that image here.

I love these little lanterns. They're a memory box die called Paper Lanterns. How perfect do they look cut out in this paper?! I just love them. I know they're a bit of colour overkill again, and I perhaps could have gone for a plain lantern, but it just felt wrong with all that beautiful japanese inspired Crafts Too paper there. I think my only mistake really with these, was to put my 'topper' together, before choosing my card base. I ended up choosing a much bigger card than I'd originally intended, so once the 'topper' was mounted onto the mat and then base, it was quite apparent, that I should have added the lanterns and umbrellas after this and given a little more space to the image. But, oh well, live and learn. There's no moving them once the Pinflair has set. Trust me to do it all backwards! 

The final touch on this card, was the first thing I thought of when I knew which image I'd be working with from Lacy Sunshine stamps. I saw Emily in her Kimono and thought, paper umbrella's! I find these wee umbrella's so cute. I much prefer them in crafts though than in drinks to be fair. I never know where to put them when I'm drinking a cocktail! Which quite frankly doesn't happen nearly enough!! So they found their place very easily on this card and the little red organza bow was just the finish I needed.

Well that's my card for today folks. I hope you've enjoyed reading a little about my process and I'd love to know what you make of all the colours and different papers. Did I get away with it? Come on over to Southern Girls Challenge and show us what you can do with our 'Circles' challenge. I'm so looking forward to seeing what your take on this challenge is! Big hugs, Wends x

Challenge Entries:
613 Avenue Create: #78 ~ Anything Goes
Papertake Weekly Challenge: Anything Goes

Crafty Catz Challenge: #237 ~ Anything Goes