A Mammoth Post!!

Hi guys!  I cannot believe how quick the time has flown past since Christmas and also that this is my first post for 2011!!  Oops!!  Have you missed me????

To make up for being absent for so long this is going to be quite a long post so I hope you are comfortable!  I'm afraid that I never did get around to loading up all those Christmas cards that I made last year so I have saved them and will load them up later on this year once we all start thinking about Christmas again.

Today I thought I'd share a 'special' card with you that I made last year for my Mum's birthday using the adorable 'Sisters' stamp by Belles'n'Whistles.  When I see this stamp it reminds me of stories that Mum has told me about her and her big sister so I thought it quite appropriate!  The card itself is quite large at 20x20cm so I was able to fit quite a bit onto it!  The pretty background paper was from the Kioshi collection by Basic Grey.  The wording stamps are from my Fancy Flourishes stamp sheet apart from the letters spelling out 'MUM' which came from a clear Hero Arts stamp sheet.  The lovely delicate flourish stamp that I've used around the main card and the Sisters panel is one of my favourite flourish stamps of all time by Penny Black called Scrolling Along.

As you can see I chose to add some interest to the main card using two Martha Stewart punches - Garden Trellis and Doily Lace Trim along with some Prima flowers from the E Line range, some pearl sprays from my own stash, punched out daisies, self-adhesive pearls, brads and spacers.

I stamped my main image using black Versafine ink onto watercolour card and used Distress inkpads to colour in my image,to stamp my wording with and the Scrolling Along flourish.  Lots of Diamond and Platinum glitter glue was then added to the card to make it sparkle!

As this was a special card for a 'special Mum' I chose to decorate the inside of the card too.  This is a picture of the whole of the inside of the card before I wrote in it.  As you can see I used the same papers as for the front of the card as well as some light green Bazzill card and used my Labels Nine Nestabilities dies for my centre panels.

Here's a closer look at the left side of the inner card.  You can see that I decorated the plain green panel by stamping it with the Scrolling Along stamp using a pale green inkpad and then used a darker green inkpad to stamp it again along the top and bottom.  I used another of my Martha Stewart punches - Floral Vine to provide some decoration along with some punched out squares, self-adhesive pearls and nailheads and of course lots of glitter glue!

I stamped the Belles 'n' Whistles Tea Time stamp into the Labels Nine die-cut and watercoloured the image using Distress inkpads.  Then I popped the corresponding Nestabilities back over the die cut and used my blending tool  along with a Bundled Sage Distress inkpad to softly ink around the edges of the die cut.

I also did this for this panel too which I then wrote in afterwards.  The wording used on these inner pages of the card came from my Fancy Flourishes stamp sheet.

I'd like to enter this card into the current Belles 'n' Whistles challenge Anything But Winter.

So are you still with me?  I did warn you that it was going to be a loooooooong post!!  I did make a box for this card to go in which I decorated too but I never got around to taking a photo of it.

I hope you liked this card - Mum did!  I'll try and do another post soon!!  Meanwhile a Happy New Year to you all.