Southern Girls - Shabby Chic

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date!!! Running in red faced with my latest Southern Girls Challenge DT card. We have a fabulous challenge for you this time. We want to see all your Girly Shabby Chic gorgeousness. Now this is NOT my forte, but I put on my big girl pants, pulled out my Wild Orchid Craft flowers, my Tim Holtz distressing tool, my doilies, ribbons and pearls and my acrylic pearl paint (this girly doesn't own gesso!) and started chanting 'I can do it, I can do it, I can do it!' Okay, so truth be told, I CAN'T, and this is as close to shabby chic as this girly can muster, so blur your vision a little and go with it! LOL.

I started off with a vision to make a square card and then discovered our Playcentre needed a card for one of our lovely educators who was leaving us at the end of this term - that means tomorrow! So I added my square design to a rectangular card base so there would be more space for people to write their farewells. It wasn't my initial intention, but actually I love it! Bringing in the Kraft card element, made me opt for the Kraft coloured gingham bow, to tie the colour into the card. I added a gorgeous Clay Heart from Live & Love Crafts, which in the absence of gesso, I added a bit of pearl coloured acrylic paint to. I think it's an okay substitute, what do you think?

This challenge, we are spoilt to have two wonderful sponsors, who have given us some truly gorgeous images to work with. My image is from the fabulous Emerald Faerie Garden and she's called Bindie. So cute and such a lovely image to work with. I took a shot of the image before I added in the cute wee mushroom as it slightly overshadows the cutie patootie ladybugs, so a quick shot before adding that into the blooms and before attaching the ribbon, gave a better view of the image itself.

I messed up the shadow under the fairy and the ladybugs, using too 'yellow' a green for this, when I'd used a 'blue' green for the rest of the grass. Note to self, stick with grey for shadows from now on! I coloured this wee cutie in haste, and didn't have time to do a 'cloudy' sky with inks, so I coloured the sky a solid light blue and added some die cut clouds instead, trimming one of them to look like it was coming from behind Bindie's wing. I used Waterfall Stickles on Bindie's wings and Crystal Stickles on the dragonfly's. I also added a touch of Christmas Red Stickles to Bindie's shoes. The image and mat were cut using MFT Stitched Circle Stax and I backed them with a paper doily.

I really love the look of the flowers I used for this card. They are a mix of Gypsophila, Chrysanthemums, 20mm Red Open Roses, and Cherry Blossoms from Wild Orchid Crafts. They're my favourite range of paper flowers to use as they really finish a card so perfectly. Live & Love Crafts are now stocking some Wild Orchid Crafts blooms, so the Chrysanthemum was from a recent order with them. I pinched out the centre of the Chrysanthemum, so that I could use the pretty red gem cabochon as the centre on this occasion and added a cute red toadstool which I picked up one Christmas in Sweden from a supermarket! I love the look of red toadstools, a passion which started when I was very small and was allowed to have a toadstool sticker on my primary school desk, from the Disney movie Bambi. So it was fun to sneak one into this make.

A peek under the bow, would reveal this pretty border die which is a Magnolia Doohickey called Heart Flower Lace. I was so gutted to have it completely covered by all the embellishments I used. I love to let the pretty papers and dies have their space to feature, so I usually favour a slightly more pared back approach in my crafting. I love the gorgeous Scandinavian inspired Papermania Home for Christmas designer paper I used for this card, it lends that home-made, hand-stitched kinda feel, which was exactly what I was after for this card. I really like those little cross-stitch hearts.

Talk about making up for lost time, that's an epic post to get through, sorry it was so long, I obviously needed to 'chat' tonight, LOL. Thanks for hanging out and do pop in again soon. I'll have another card ready to share very soon. In the meantime, head on over to the Southern Girls Challenge blog and have some fun with us in our 'Girly Shabby Chic' challenge. Big hugs, Wends x

Challenge Entries:
A Little Bit Crafty: Distress It
Divas By Design: Pretty In Glitter

Papertake Weekly: Oh How Cute!
A Creative Romance: Anything Goes
Cute Card Thursday: #340 ~ Dies & Punches
Passion for Promarkers: #266 ~ Autumn Colours
Crafty Little Fairies: September ~ Sparkle & Bling

Simon Says Monday Challenge: Stencils & Stamps
Deep Ocean Challenge: #87 ~ At Least One Flower

Simons Says Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes

As You Like It: Favourite Digi Stamp & Why? (I love digi stamps for their convenience and have a number of favourite designers, Sugar Nellie, Saturated Canary, Mo's Digital Pencil, but these stamps from the Emerald Faerie Garden are some of my earliest and favourites. Here's a link to a really old card I made using one of their images. Still just as gorgeous today as when I first discovered them.)

Woop woop! I got Top 3 in the 'As You Like It' Favourite Digi Stamp Challenge.