Shabby & Vintage?

If you have visited my blog recently you may have seen two cards which I entered for the House of Cards October Sketch Challenge (you can see the sketch below) - one being CAS and the other Classic & Elegant styles. Well this week the style is 'Shabby & Vintage' and I can honestly say I don't think I've ever made a card in this style (well not intentionally!!) Not to be beaten I had an idea in my head and set to - whether it can be described as shabby, vintage, a mixture of both or neither remains to be seen but at least I tried.
I started with a piece of Pink Pirouette DSP and sponged around the edges with Crumb Cake then added the 'crosses' with two strips of cardstock which had been cut with the Scallop Trim Border Punch, this was then matted onto a Crumb Cake card blank. The fancy circle in the centre is from the Perfect Pennants Bigz die with a circle of DSP, cut with a Circles Collection Framelit, matted onto it and stamped with the sentiment from Field Flowers.
For the larger flowers I took a piece of Pink Pirouette cardstock, distressed it with a bone folder and separated the two layers before cutting with the Floral Fusions Sizzlits die. These were sponged lightly with Crumb Cake before glueing the layers together and a Basic Pearl added to the centre. The leaves were cut from the Little Leaves Sizzlits die and the tiny flowers from one of the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch pack. The 'ribbon' loops are pieces of Crochet Trim coloured with Pink Pirouette ink. My apologies for the long explanation but there were a lot of different components to the card and this is one I definitely won't be adding to my 'Simples Sunday' collection :0)

This is the sketch!!

                             
              Margaret x

Friends at LIM

Today the challenge at Less is More is on the theme of 'Friends' and this is my entry. Yesterday I was watching a video on YouTube called 'Quick & Easy Focal Points' so I thought I would give it a go. (If you would like to see how it's done the video can be found here). I started by stamping a retired stamp, in Elegant Eggplant, straight onto a 12cm square card blank, this was then masked off using a post-it note cut slightly bigger than the sentiment. The leaf stamp from Summer Silhouettes was inked with Certainly Celery, stamped off and then stamped onto the card with the flowers stamped in Perfect Plum (I don't think I could have cleaned my small stamp properly last time I used it because they look a little redder than the larger flowers!). The mask was then removed before drawing two straight lines part way across the card using a ruler and an Elegant Eggplant marker pen. The card was finished off with a strip of Elegant Eggplant cardstock, punched down one side with the Scallop Trim Border punch.
This morning saw me shovelling snow in an attempt to dig my car out and clear my drive and, guess what, it's snowing again with even more forecast for tomorrow. Was it worth it I ask myself???
Until next time I will leave you with a couple of snowy photos of my garden - very pretty but I wish it would go away :(0