Waltzing through the spring flowers

Well it seems as is Spring is finally arriving here in the north of England, although, as the old saying goes "n'er cast a clout til May is out" so I'm not holding my breath for sunshine just yet!  If you're interested in sayings and are unsure what this one means, I've done some research as I was never sure myself despite it being told to me often as a child.  As best as I can tell, it refers to hobnail boots which were worn in the winter and clouts were the nails used to hold them together so the idea is that you wouldn't get rid of any nails until the end of May in case you had to repair your boots as the bad weather could still return until then.  OK enough dodgy linguistics, on with what you came for - some Waltzingmouse eye candy!  http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/april-waltzingmouse-stamps-blog.html

I used the seed packet from Vintage Garden Seed Packet and stamped onto kraft and fussy cut and then I decided I wanted a huge flower to burst out of it so I cut a 3D flower on my cameo and layered it up.  The orange centre is a quilled fringe.  I added some swirly leaves using a die (i forget the brand - they're purple if that helps!)  I then added some DP on the diagonal and stamped the word "flowers" from the seed packet set repeatedly along a strip of the paper I made the flower from.  As I gave this card to my Aunt at the beginning of the month, I pulled out my favourite sentiments from the most useful set ever Compact Family to create the perfect greeting stamped in Rhubarb Stalk ink to match the flower.

I'm also going to enter this into the Creative Card Crew's challenge this week which is to make your own flower http://creativecardcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/challenge-34-handmade-flowers.html 

Oscars Red Carpet Inspiration

Claire set a doozy of a challenge this week - to be inspired by the red carpet fashion of the 2013 Oscars ceremony http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/red-carpet-challenge-links-open.html

My favourite dress of the night was without doubt Hale Berrie's Versace number - designed to make her look like a Bond Girl in ready for her to be just that in the next movie - and it was stunning - classy and elegant but making an on-trend statement with all that loverley metallic shimmer - yum!  However, I wasn't sure I could make a card purely based on this dress, so I decided to be a rebel and use my 3 favourites together in one card.

Gloria Rueben's deep purple ruffled dress adorned with a fluffy flower train looked wonderful (although I have no idea who made it or how she managed to walk in it!) and Nicole Kidman's uber-sequined and super shimmery dress was chosen by her husband Keith Urban - the encrusted top caught my eye but I was less impressed by the swirly bottom....

Anyhow, just like all the high street stores fashion designers, I took the bits that inspired me from each dress, diluted them to suit my price bracket, and came up with this:

I used a precious sheet from my all time favourite paper pad Paris Nights from GCD Studios to represent Halle's dress and I die cut a fancy frame from gold paper with a spellbinders die to represent the faux buckle on Nicole's dress.  I stamped the word Mum using the extremely useful Compact Family stamp set from Waltzingmouse using stazon ink so it stuck to the pearlised paper.  I added some texture to represent the folds on Gloria's dress by spritzing some purple card stock with water and roughly folding it.  Once dry double stick tape give you a nice tight finish and holds the pleats down.

Then I finished with a great big flower - again inspired by Gloria's dress - but I'm really thrilled with this flower as I made it myself from a quite unexpected source - the smallest die from Claire's exclusive Opera Tags compatible spellbinders die :-)   Simply cut 7 tags and use a tiny brad through the hole to hold them together, fan them out  and you have a pretty fancy flower even if I do say so myself!  I took further inspiration from Nicole's dress and used black, copper and gold sequins to encrust the centre of the flower - not as many sequins as on the dress itself I'm sure - but the feel is still there I think.

I can't wait to see which dresses inspired everyone and where they took this challenge - it's a really interesting one - thanks Claire!