Vintage Card for Deconstructed Sketches Challenge

I was surfing the net today to get some inspiration for my Retreat swaps (which I still haven't started!) and discovered a relatively new site called Deconstructing Jen - it has a Sketch Challenge that looks really neat and not too hard to comply with.

So here is the sketch challenge this week:

And here is my interpretation of it:

My base card is Soft Suede and I have mounted some Attic Boutique Designer Series Paper on Crumb Cake (stitching around the edge in aqua cotton).  This paper is a lovely design and very vintage in its theme but the difficulty is that it is hard to match romantic colours to it. All other cardstock on the card is Very Vanilla. I had lots of new toys to try out including stamps, a new embossing folder and Jumbo Sticky Rounds which are coming out in the Holiday Catalogue tomorrow.

The Textured Embossing Folder is called Lacy Brocade and I am officially in love!  I have used it on about 15 projects and have only owned it for a week! Because textured cardstock is often hard to adhere things to I used the Jumbo Sticky Rounds because they give more coverage than snail and sticky strip.

Stamps in this project include the divine new Papaya Collage which will be released in the Annual Catalogue in Australia tomorrow (yyaaayy!).  French Foliage, an all time favourite of mine along with En Francais and Creative Elements.  And Sincere Salutations which retires as of midnight tonight.

I stamped the smallest leaf from French Foliage and fussy cut them out, then distressed them to sit behind the flowers.  Because the flowers blended into the page a bit I popped a bit of torn Gumball Green cardstock behind the flowers as well which I distressed and damaged first - can't help myself! And because the embossed card ran behind the flowers I made the beige flower from Sahara Sand cardstock to make it pop a little.

So all the stamping has been done using my Soft Suede classic ink pad.  I stamped the fern leaves from Papaya Collage ~ but I stamped it off first so the darkest image you see above is actually a second generation stamped image, followed by third and fourth.  I tore a post-it note down the sides, stuck it in the middle of my tag and then stamped it with En Francais so that the italic words would only be on the edges. 

The Pool Party cardstock behind the tag is stamped using the filigree stamp from Creative Elements around the edges.  I could not resist daubing and distressing the card before mounting them.

The darker brown card behind the blue is Soft Suede and I stamped it using bleach and en Francais as I only wanted a hint of writing to lend in with the designer paper.  The stained the lace with black tea and possibly should have rinsed it out a bit more as it is quite brown.  I made the tag shape myself and added a Soft Suede 1/2" circle then punched out the centre with the Cropodile and threaded it with Pool Party Seam Binding.

Happy crafting,
Shanni x