A Thanks With a Kiss - a Scrap Our Stash Challenge project for May I

Afternoon Folks,

I've been having a lovely time in the craft space over the last couple of days. The challenge for May over at Scrap Our Stash is entitled 'May I' and the requirements are to complete a project by finding inspiration from the blog of someone whose work you admire. This has required me to spend a fair bit of time trawling through some of my favourite blogs - and I don't need much encouragement to do that :) The result is this pretty card.

Whilst I admire a number of styles, steampunk, CAS (not that I'm any good at that) Barbara Gray, etc., my all-time favourite is the shabby chic/vintage style and Lenet Mos at To Scrap or Not to Scrap - That's the Question.  is an expert in this style. Here is her piece which I used as inspiration.

Lenet's clever use of gentle pastel shades, seam binding, cotton lace and pretty flowers can be seen in this delicate card. Needless to say, I did not have all, or any, of the same materials so had to trawl around my stash for suitable alternatives ... keeping to my pledge to Use-It-Up ... and all the papers and card used came from the snippet box :)

I especially like how Lenet takes a plain white chipboard frame and completely transforms it with ink, embossing powder and glitter. My frame is covered in a mixture embossing powders and glitters, all mixed together in a pot ... just a pinch of this and a pinch of that ... not very precise at all. It took just two coats of the mix to achieve the effect aimed for.

The seam binding was sprayed with water, crumpled up and left overnight to dry to get the shabby effect. The rose was already tinted with a pale mauve shade but the edges of the petals have also been tipped with Victorian Velvet DI. I didn't have any of those pretty pink petals that Lenet used so I punched some from a snippet of pink card and touched the tips with distress ink too.

The inside is decorated with the leftover half of the circle of DP you can just about see on the front, and for the back, I've just wrapped the main DP over to make a border - something I often do because I think it finishes it off nicely. All the papers, card edges and the doily are edged with Old Paper distress ink to give an aged look.

Materials used:

• A white card base measuring 6" x 3½" 
• Prima Londonerry 6x6 paper stack
• White doily - 5" in diameter
• Woodware punches - large circle, leaf plus the snippet of pink card
• Crafty Individuals Miniatures, People & Places
• Papermania Chipboard Shapes, Frames & Flourishes
• Inks: Tim Holtz Distress Inks, Old Paper, Victorian Velvet and Shabby Shutters; Memento, Tuxedo Black; VersaMark
• Stamp from Stampin' Up's So Happy for You set
• Prima Say It With Pearls, SIIP Swirls - I've been snipping bits of this for years but it's almost finished now, sob
• Wild Orchid Crafts Rose
• Ribbon Girls seam binding, Siam Pink

And the contents of the embossing mix:

• Embossing powders: clear, pink (brands names long forgotten), Papermania Seafoam White, WOW Magenta Twinkle
• Glitters: iridescent white and dark gold (again, brands unknown) 
• Mica powder: Crafty Notions, Champagne

The final requirement of the challenge is to leave a comment on Lenet's blog just say that I've taken inspiration from her blog - this I will do immediately.

If you would like to participate in this fun challenge please submit a picture and brief description of your project along with the a link to the inspiration blog to Kathy at scrappinpsycho@live.com. Sadly, Kathy has, with regret, decided to quit SOS, and is looking for someone to take over the running of this popular challenge ... unfortunately, I am unable to take this on but if you feel that is something you would like to be involved in, please contact Kathy - I'm sure she would be glad to hear from you.

 I would like also to submit this project to the following challenges:

DYSU Challenge Blog - #71 - Use a Flower

Paper Play Challenges - Week 19 - Chipboard - the frame

and of course, having used all those snippets, it has to go into Pixie's Crafty Snippets Challenge - #19 

After a couple of days of rain the sun has got his hat on, hip, hip, hooray :) The Boss has been out in the garden all day, stretched out and basking in the sunshine ... bliss! And after such a hard day, she's now stretched out and resting on the end of my bed - who'd be a cat :)

I think perhaps we can thank Prince Charles, who is currently on a visit to Ayrshire, for this change in the  weather after his fun stint as a weatherman on BBC Scotland yesterday - for those who have yet to see how well he did with as a TV weather forecaster you can see it here.

And even better news is that the the drought in the south of England is over ... not too surprising after the unremitting rain spell down there recently.

Right, I'm done ... time for a cuppa and a bit of idle time before I move on to my next project ... no idea what that's going to be yet :)

Take care all  and happy crafting,