Birthday Ribbons

It's my blogging friend Anne's birthday today and I know she has received her card so I'm free to share it here now without spoiling the surprise.  I made her card using this week's sketch from Waltzingmouse as my starting point  http://waltzingmousesketchchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/challenge-125november-24-2012.html

I stamped the Hyacinth from Vintage Garden Flowers onto white cardstock and a cut with a round die after painting with Luminarte shimmer paints.  The background is actually the packaing from some Verve stamps and was just too pretty to end up in the bin.  I embossed a sentiment from Compact Sentiments in purple onto this.  I cut some ribbons from purple card and stamped them with a darker purple ink using the lace border from French Country which is just about visible in the photo if you make it bigger.  I added a darker purple strip across with some light purple gems to finish.

Fabby green peacock

I took just one floral image stamp from the newly released French Country set but as soon as I saw it it screamed peacock to me so here's my entry for this months Blog Party and as it also fits this weeks sketch I'll enter it in this weeks challenge too.

The photo isn't great so unfortunately the metalic shimmer on top of the colouring isn't showing up at all.  To make my peacock I stamped the foral image 5 times, coloured with copics added shimmer with sakura glaze pens and cut each out to form the fan tail.  For the body I stamped the same image but carefully inked only the edge and not the floral centre twice.  I cut out the whole central teardrop of one for the body and used just the narrow point of the other with a rounded edge for the head and added three tiny strips for fan on his head and finished with a little peacock coloured glitter.  Teamed with a green background and sheer green ribbon to just about scrape into this month's theme (sorry Clare didn't have anything Celtic!) and used one of my favourite sentiments from the Frame It set.

Do accept my apologies if I don't manage to reciprocate all your visits today but I am suffering with very high blood pressure and the meds I'm on are making me so dizzy all the time that I'm really not managing to be online for more than a few minutes here and there.  I'll try to get around to see all the green loveliness whenever I feel OK.  Thanks for visiting - I do love the 17th.....