A card at last

It feels like ages since I posted a card, its only actually been a couple of days, but there's been so much going on with the kids back to school and Graham going away offshore.

I thought it was about time I entered a few challenges so the first one I picked was the Sugar Bowl. There is a fabulous sketch by our very own local quine Judy and the wee twist is to make your own flowers.

So without further ado, here's my attempt - am not particularly thrilled with it, it worked much better in my head and the hand stitching (again influenced by Judy and her fab article in Craft Stamper magazine this month) isn't very obvious in the photo or even in real life - I obviously need to try a paler paper or a darker, thicker thread.

Image: Honey with gifts from Sugar Nellie, coloured with promarkers; blush and dusky pink for skin, burnt umber and umber for hair, sandstone and cinnamon for trousers, coat and hat, blossom and rose pink for shoes, trim, hat and scarf, sandstone, cinnamon and cocoa for the puppy, cocoa and carmine for pressies

The oval was cut using oval nesties in the cuttlebug, the mat was cut from core'dinations card with scallop oval nesties, the vertical panel of core'dinations card was embossed with the snowflakes embossing folder and sanded.

The stripy and snowflake papers are from the Daisy & Dandelion Xmas pad, as is the greeting. I painstakingly used my pokey tool to make holes all the way round the snowflake paper, then hand stitched it with silver metallic thread - and am gutted its so not obvious.

The home-made flowers were punched using the EK Success retro flower punch from the D & D stripy paper, I embossed them to make them more 3D and added card candy from craftwork cards for the centres.