Beautiful Rose

My lovely friends took me out last Saturday for a belated birthday celebration and I thought it would be nice to send them a card to thank them (rather than just thinking about it).  

This 2nd October sketch for Viva la Verve from the fabulous Lesley Croghan inspired me, although this scarcely resembles what I originally had  in mind, which was more in line with this gorgeous card from Lesley.

I was so excited because I thought that I could finally use something that's been in my stash for ages - Spellbinders Label 21.  I just had to have it at the time but have not been able to use it successfully in the 3 or 4 years I have owned it (familiar story anyone?).  I thought that if I embossed it as Lesley has done here, I could get it to work for me.  However my attempts at using the label 21 here were no better and I ended up ditching the idea after two or so hours!!!  The proportions just don't work for me.

At about midnight, I settled upon using this NBUS Sizzix Albany Rose, which I embossed and enamelled with WOW! Pastel Pink embossing powder and UTEE.  I did the same for the leaves from the set Stamp'n Stuff Emerald Green Embossing powder (quite dark for emerald green but I wanted a dark green anyway).

I made this sentiment panel using a die from the Verve Beautiful Flowers die.  I have been wanting to try this for ages. It has previously been just a plain rectangular piece of card, which was a little too plain, so I used a circle punch to invert the corners.

Because the rose was so thick and I wanted this lovely sentiment to sit above the rose (the stem could have been longer),  I ended up mounting the sentiment on a double layer of foam tape.  This didn't look too good from the side view so I wrapped a little peach organza ribbon around the mounting tape and tied a fancy knot at the top - much neater.

I hope you enjoyed your visit and I didn't bore you with too much detail, I love to read posts which explain how things are managed and short cuts/workarounds, as well as what lovely stash items are out there - so if I have the time I'll do that on my own posts.

Thanks for stopping by.  Please feel free to leave some positive feedback - I love to hear from you,

Kate