Our Golden Girl

Since I saw that there was a Silhouette Cameo specific challenge coming to blogland a few weeks ago, I have been eagerly awaiting its first challenge which arrived a few days ago  - and the first challenge is to create a project with the theme of summer  http://thecameospotlight.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-cameo-spotlight-1.html

 Now, when you see my card below, you are probably going to wonder what on earth it has to do with summer, so let me explain!  Over here in the UK we've been very excited about the Olympics as they were staged in London (even I had to admit how much I enjoyed it even though I thought it would be a costly load of rubbish before it happened!)  I think this was in part helped by just how outstandingly well we've done on the medals front this year and one of the gold medal winners holds a special place in my heart as she was born and bred (and trained) in my home town - our very own Jessica Ennis proudly won GOLD in the heptathlon and Sheffield is holding a civic reception for her to celebrate on Friday.

So for me, this summer has definitely been all about the Olympics, and I wanted to do my bit to congratulate Jess on her long return to fitness after missing out in Beijing so I've made my "summer project" a card for her. 

Again, if you don't live in the UK, this may not make much sense as you're probably thinking what on EARTH has this got to do with the Olympics?  Well, the Royal Mail came up with a great idea and have given every gold medal winner a "gold" mail box in their home towns - which will stay painted gold for a few weeks while we all celebrate but will eventually be returned to red.  I wanted Jessica to have a copy to keep forever so I made her a gold postbox (see it DOES makes sense, honest!)

I found a great London Postbox image in the Silhouette Store and took the main outer shape, mirrored it and lengthened a few bits to create some join lines I could merge to make a shaped base card.  I then swapped the traditional "ER" letters (sorry your Majesty!) for Jess's initials and cut all the shaped elements from black and gold.  Once assembled I stamped No 1 in the centre panel (Waltzingmouse stamps) and added her "unofficial" title - the Queen of Sheffield using a mixture of Elzybells alphabet stamps and a local "greetings from Sheffield" stamp all of which I embossed in gold to make it show up on the black.

I am also going to enter this card into the following challenges:

http://paperplaychallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/12-week-32-shaped-card.html

http://stamptacularsundaychallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/challenge-17-shape-it-up.html 

http://thesecretcraftersaturdaychallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/challenge-198.html - Gold, Silver or Bronze

 Sorry for such an epic post - thanks for sticking with it if you're still reading this far!

This would also, of course, be a perfect card to enter our "Going for Gold" challenge over at St Luke's Charity Cards Challenge this month - and you can win Waltzingmouse Stamps and a Gold Medal if you do!