Southern Girls ~ Nature

Hey there my lovely blog buddies, it's time for a new 'Team Lou' challenge at Southern Girls and our theme this fortnight is 'Nature'. We're being sponsored by two awesome sponsors this challenge, Polkadoodles and Crafts & Me. Check out these fabulous sponsors, you won't be disappointed.

I chose to work with a gorgeous image from Polkadoodles called Octavia Moonfly Wistful. I think it's perfect for our 'Nature' theme. I love this image, there's just something rather enchanting about it. I coloured it up with my Promarkers and then set about trying to find papers to work with it. Always a mistake, I should have chosen the papers first and then coloured her! But I don't think the match worked out too badly. I'm sending this to a lovely pal for her 'big' birthday which is coming up very soon, so I used some of my 'stroke only' Maja Design papers. I used front and back of the 8th of April paper from the Vintage Spring Basics and the paper I used to mat the image is the reverse of the 10th of April paper from the same set.

I fussy cut the image after adding some blue around it, which on second thoughts might have looked better left white, but I wanted to hint at some blue sky behind her. I added a little doily as it looked too bare without anything there. I couldn't find my cream doilies, which might have toned slightly better, but I think I got away with it, just.

I used the soft colours from the gorgeous Maja Papers to determine the embellishments and went for a soft lilac and cream theme. I've used a lush guipure lace, some thin satin ribbon which I tied a double bow with and stitched a gorgeous wooden heart from Live & Love Crafts onto. The sentiment is an older one from Lili of the Valley if I recall correctly. I inked it in Memento Elderberry, so it has a purple hue rather than black ink. I used the same ink to run around the edge of the circle. I used a punch to create the little butterflies. 3 in a dark purple shade, topped with 3 slightly lighter ones and finished with tiny mauve pearls from MeiFlower. The scalloped edge I created from scraps I had on my diecutting table and I used a Magnolia Tilda's Lace die for this. 

I had intended to add some flowers too, but when I had added the wee butterflies, I couldn't see where else to add the flowers, and I didn't want to loose all the details, because I've even hand stitched the edges of this card! I've been loving the stitching on Kat's cards from Paper Firefly, you can check out a gorgeous make she did also using a stunning Polkadoodles image here. I was using my gorgeous Maja papers, so I thought I'd go the extra mile and hand stitch all the papers. I'm so pleased with how this came out! The final touch was to add the darker pearls in the bottom corners. I did add one each to the two top corners, but it didn't look right, so I took them off.

Well that's it for today. Do go check out my amazing teamies and their fabulous creations on the challenge blog. I hope you'll come and join us too for our 'Nature' challenge this fortnight at Southern Girls, with two awesome prizes up for grabs, it's worth entering. Hugs, Wends x

Challenge Entries:
Creative Inspirations: #247 ~ Nature
Dream Valley: #127 ~ All About Birthdays
Polkadoodles Crafting: #10 ~ Spring Colours
The Cutie Pie Challenge: #97 ~ So Fairy Cute
Allsorts Challenge: #354 ~ Spring Is In The Air
Sparkles Monthly Challenge: #78 ~ Make It Girlie
Little Patch of Crafty Friends: #29 ~ Anything Goes
Inky Impressions: March ~ Let's Hear It For The Girl!
Card Mania Challenges: #78 ~ Polka Dots or Stripes (Striped Paper)
Clear It Out Challenge: Patterned Paper Over 1 Year Old (I've had these Maja Papers Forever!)

Soapbox Rant...
I could have cried last night when I happened upon yet another Pinterest link (when following a tutorial thread) and landed on a page full of Krista Smiths images, which had obviously had all the copyright marks taken out, so they were left blotchy and patchy. Who would want to use an image like that? It makes me so mad. Why do people think it's okay to rob our lovely artists of their revenue? Without them, we colourists wouldn't have half as much fun! I'm proud to be part of the Southern Girls DT. We've made a stand last year not to support derivative artists and all our sponsors are true artists, with their own distinct styles. I think it's important to ensure when buying stamps that we're supporting genuine artists. If a stamp reminds you overly of another artist, it's likely it's a derivative work. True artists have their own unique style, their own look and feel. These are the artists I want to support and encourage all to do the same. Rant over, thanks x