Southern Girls - Boys, Boys, Boys

It's that time again for a new Southern Girls Challenge and it's our 99th challenge! It's Team Lou's turn to showcase some really fun and fabulous images from two of our wonderful sponsors for this challenge. Make it Crafty and Emerald Faerie Garden. Both our sponsors have the most fantastic stamps, you're going to love them! 

We have a third sponsor for this challenge too, the wonderful Iva Nova Chest. I can vouch for their gorgeous prizes first hand, as I won one, from a Southern Girls Challenge before I joined the Southern Girls DT. So I know the winner is going to love the little parcel that arrives in the post from them!

I was given a stamp from Make it Crafty to use for this challenge and as I happened to have another couple from them in my stash already, I decided to go for the trifecta and combine three images to make a fun Christmas morning theme. Yep, I can't help myself, I'm all about the Christmas makes at this time of year! I used Little Christmas Tree, Elf with Gift and Playful Elf Sitting to create my little Christmas scene.

Now it is a 'boys' challenge this time around, but I made the card for my daughter Georgie, to give to my son Zac for Christmas. I know she'll want to make her own card for him, but when I saw these images, I knew it would make a really cute card and theme done this way. So yes, it's a boys card, but it does have pink! Everybody repeat after me... "real men wear pink". Hehe, not in this household, but fortunately Zac is only four, so he still thinks 'all the colours are beautiful' and won't mind a bit the pink and brown colour scheme. In fact when he saw the finished card, he asked, "is it for me?", bless.

The paper I've used as the 'wallpaper' in the image is from a lovely digital Christmas paper set by Mindy Baxter called Christmas Cookies. I went through quite a few different papers before settling on this sweet one. The darker ones didn't work as they swamped the images, so this lighter paper made a really lovely backdrop to my scene. I didn't want to use any other designer papers, as I felt this would detract or take away from the scene, so I opted for white and kraft as the backdrop. I used a pretty Memory Box edge die called Frostyville snow border for a little interest on the left of the image and a simple wrap of pretty pink crushed silk ribbon to finish that area off. The right hand corner was a bit bare without anything, so I added a Quickutz photo corner with a pink pearl.

I edged the image with tea dye distress ink then used a pale pink mat and then a kraft card mat to mount the image. I mounted the image onto foam pads for a little extra dimension. The three images were merged in word with the digital paper as a backdrop. I then coloured the images with my Promarkers, added Glossy Accents to the baubles and star, then glued 5 little snowflakes which were cut from the Memory Box die onto the tree and added some Diamond Stickles to finish them. I also added Glossy Accents to all the little bells in the image and to the girls belt buckle. I used Stickles Ice Glitter on the tree to emulate the sparkly tinsel my mama used to wrap round our tree when I was little. My final extra texture treatment was some Liquid Applique to the girls hat trim, which puffed up really nicely and you might just catch a glimpse of the dimension in one of the photos that caught it in the right light.

The sentiment I've used is from Stampendous and is a really fun one which I utterly fell for after seeing my blog buddy Nic use it a couple of times. Not the first time seeing her gorgeous cards has sent me shopping and I'm sure it won't be the last either!

Right, that's more than enough chit chat from me today. Come on over to the Southern Girls Challenge blog and check out my madly talented teamies and while you're there, join in the challenge! Have an awesome week, I'm off to start the panic clean before our dinner guests arrive. Hugs, Wends x

Challenge Entries:
A Creative Romance: Pink
Papertake Weekly: Anything Goes
Inky Chicks: #41 ~ Three Stamps On A Card
Loves Rubberstamps Challenge: Anything Goes
Totally Gorjuss: #260 ~ Non Traditional Christmas Colours
The Ribbon Girl: November Card Challenge ~ Christmas Card
Whimsy Stamps Challenge: #77 ~ Two or More Stamps (I've used three)

Passion For Promarkers: #272 ~ Beatles Song ~ Christmas Time (Is Here Again)

Simon Says Monday Challenge: Good ol' Days ~ Ice Stickles = tinsel from childhood

Live & Love Crafts: #29 ~ Favourite Christmas Colour Combo (I really love pink and Kraft, I tried this combo last year, which you can see here and loved it, so here's my pink/kraft for this year.)