Vintage flowers and black lace

One of the ladies in my office is going to be 30 tomorrow so I thought I'd better pull my finger out and make a card to suit :-) Normally I tend to make really cute and girly cards in pastel colours for female friends; but last night for some reason I was feeling in a different kind of mood. I have also been getting in late from work so the light isn't so good for stamping and colouring; and last but not least I had a couple of new dies that I hadn't played with yet ... so here is what I did.

This is a bit different for me in several respects. It's not my usual kind of colour scheme at all, but I was aiming to be a bit more sophisticated with this colour palette ... I guess whether or not I succeeded is for you to judge lol! The card also has no stamping, and was my first attempt at making hand made paper roses with the Marianne D die I recently won in a challenge. I didn't quite get the hang of it at first and had a couple of cast offs, but I was reasonably happy with these ones for my first attempt. I was actually surprised by how small the roses turned out ... I don't know why, but for some reason I thought they would be quite a bit bigger! I'm also ashamed to say that I have had the Magnolia flower die for quite a few weeks and just not had time to play with it until now! 

Media: distressing done with TH "Antique Paper" and "Vintage Photo" distress inks;

Paper: Basic Grey "Little Black Dress";

Supplies: pearls from The Hobby House; ribbon and lace from my stash;

Tools: Labels One nestabilities; Magnolia Doohickey "doily flowers" die; Marianne D "English Rose" die set (roses and leaves); Cuttlebug "Hippie Chick" alphabet die set for numbers.

Challenges:

Simon Says Stamp & Show - Layered 

(paper, lace, ribbon, flowers and roses)

Cupcake #200 - Number Cruncher

Oldie But A  Goodie - Flower Power 

(I have had the number dies for years)

Party Time Tuesdays #76 - Let's Get Punchy!

Paper Pretties Wednesday #214 - Try A New Technique

Dutch Dare #173 - Tic-Tac-Toe
(flowers / pearls / distressing)
Crafty Creations #178 - Free For All

Penny's Paper Crafty - Anything Goes

I've recently been selling some of my crafty cast-off's through my local craft shop ... and today I collected £33 from £44-worth of sales (they take a 25% cut which is fair enough).  This was a great surprise as I didn't think there were that many of my goods left on their second hand table! Of course I had to give some of it back straight away as they had received a new delivery of Memory Box dies :-) ... so now I have a little something to try out on a Christmas project - watch this space!