'E' is for Embellishments...

I love the idea at http://abc-challenge.blogspot.com/ where the challenges are planned to go through the alphabet using each letter in turn. At the moment the challenge is to use embellishments and as it's the school holidays there is a whole fortnight to complete the challenge.

I decided to use my new mask and corner stencil by Joy (hmm think that counts as a personal 'buy it and use it' challenge completed too). I was led to these stencils by another blogger, Heather at http://ricas-haven.blogspot.com/ who had made the most gorgeous card using one of the stencil designs.

My stencil is the flower design which I embossed on to silver mirror card using my Wizard machine. Keeping the stencil in place I pricked that section of the design and then cut the whole mask out. It was then attached to the card and embellished with jewels and a feather. I embellished the corner section in the same way and finished the card off using wide line silver peel offs to form a frame around the whole card.

The card is for my daughter who finishes Uni next week. It's not a graduation card as the results don't come through for ages yet but it is the last weekend she will spend in Liverpool with her friends and I think that calls for a celebration for them all. I know she will love the card as I'm enclosing some cash to celebrate with!!!

Ribbons and bows...

I seem to have bought quite a lot of ribbon recently so it was really good to be encouraged to put it to good use in the challenge at http://thisthursday.wordpress.com/. Their theme this week is use ribbon and bows in your project.

I usually make a bow and stick it on somewhere on my card but I've seen so many cards recently where the ribbon goes all the way around the card that I wanted to give that a try - I know it's not a new idea but it's something I haven't done much so it was newish to me!

Out came those gorgeous Penny Black stamps again and some cute snowball paper from the English Paper Company that I bought in a sale last year.

No Pink...

'Your cards can feature any colour, but NO PINK !! ' were the instructions for the challenge this week at http://pennybfriendssaturdaychallenge.blogspot.com/. I chose blue and used one of the stamps from the Penny Black Christmas Critters sheet of clear rubber stamps I bought a few weeks back. Each of the images in the collection is absolutely gorgeous - having said that Penny Black are up there in my very favourite stamps at the moment.

The layout is from a Splitcoast Stampers sketch (I think) with a few variations (mainly because mine didn't look right somehow - maybe I got the size of the squares wrong I don't know!

The snowflakes are decorated with clear gem stones which I can happily add to every card now I make now with no guilt feelings as apparently if you keep them too long they become useless. Thank you to a member of the Joanna Sheen forum for passing that warning on to us all.