Forever Friends Card - for the Tuesday Morning Sketches Challenge

Afternoon All

As I used the sketch from Tuesday Morning Sketches #199, I think it's only right that I submit this card to the challenge.

Some of you will recognise it as the partly done card that was languishing on my desk Wednesday morning - the one I was agonising over and wondering if it would suit my 13 year old granddaughter. Well, lacking any better ideas, I've finished it and sent it anyway. Here's the sketch the layout is based on.

Instead of making it a portrait card, I've gone for landscape but otherwise I've followed the sketch pretty much as is. Some time ago I won a prize on one of the Docrafts challenges for this scrap layout of my visit to the Hard Rock Cafe in Boston - coincidentally another sketch challenge - which included this Forever Friends topper, paper and greeting in a Kraft Notes Collection kit.

Ready made decoupage is not something I do a lot of, but it is quick and easy and the papers included in the kit are lovely. The cute teddy, once put together, was adhered to a white oval die cut topper. As usual, I traced around the die onto kraft card to create the mat for the topper and added faux stitching around the edge with a brown ProMarker. More faux stitching was added to the plaid paper. The banners are made from some pretty leftovers from a scrapping session - the colours just happened to go well with the plaid.

The dotty pink heart in the greeting has Anita's gloss added to it and so has the teddy's nose and eyes - not that that shows up in any of the photographs.

Another of the greetings from the kit has been added to the inside of the card.

Materials:

• the sketch from Tuesday Morning Sketches 
• smooth white and kraft cardstock - PaperMill Direct
• Docrafts Forever Friends Kraft Notes kit which includes the decoupage topper, patterned paper and greeting topper
• X-cut oval shaped die
• snippets of American Crafts Dear Lizzy patterned paper (for the banners)
• Tim Holtz Vintage Photo ink pad - used to ink most of the edges
• ProMarker, Burnt Sienna - for faux stitching
• ribbon - pink/white polka dot organza, rose pink metallic cord from MeiFlower, metal 'made for you' charm from stash 
• Anita's gloss finish

I'm also submitting this card to Pixies Crafty Snippets Playground - Week 74 - where the only challenge from Di is that we use up our snippets, and that we behave ourselves in the playground :)

It's been a day of mixed weather here, this morning it was overcast and quite chilly - I know this because we went down to the big car boot sale and market at the racecourse and I had my hands in my pockets all the time just trying to keep them warm - but then the clouds disappeared this afternoon and the sun came out to play and it has been lovely ever since. Considering it usually rains for a bank holiday, this one is turning out to be a record breaker!

And what did we buy at the market - plants of course! A very pretty red million bells petunia for one of the two ornamental birdcages we have - in the other is a striking yellow and white striped one bought last weekend - and a tray of sweet alyssum to spot around the garden.

My plan for now is to make a start on a scrap page I've been intending to work on for quite a while now ... and I'm hoping to complete it too. Well, as I say, that's the plan ... as my daughter is fond of saying, we'll see :)

Hope your weekend is going as well as ours and that the weather has held up for you too.

Happy crafting,