Mia is ten!

How ever did that happen? Len's eldest grand daughter was ten years old yesterday and, like a lot of little girls, she's very much into horse riding as well as ballet. I made her a 'horsey' card last year so it was an 'easel style ballet' theme this year:

I used:

- 6" square white scalloped edged card, by Craftwork Cards

- a second card the same, sliced in half across the spine

- scored the main folded card right across the centre and folded it to act as the 'prop' for the easel

- two identical pieces of designer papers from the Wild Rose Studio 'Vintage Rose' paper pack, trimmed down and glued onto the inside of the easel, as well as onto what would be the 'standing up front piece of card' (there must be a technical term for this surely?!

- then stuck the easel front onto the folded section of the base card using red line tape - I did have to fiddle a little with cutting a smidgeon off to line up the scallops

- die cut the ballet shoes and ribbon using a Joanna Sheen Signature Die called 'Ballet Shoes - SD207' and a little snippet of pale pink card

- then die cut it again using a snippet of white card, backed with Stick-It, for the ribbons

- snipped the white ribbons (they did need some careful trimming, I will not lie!)  and fixed them in place onto the shoes

- despite using the embossing plates and rubber mat for the pink shoes themselves, I didn't feel there was still enough 'definition' and they looked just like a clump of pink, so I deepened the embossing using a ball ended tool and a soft mat behind the die cut

- then glued the shoes onto a square of deeper pink card (yet another snippet) which had been die cut using one of the dies from The Works 'Stitched Squares' set - and glued that onto the easel card front

- die cut the letters and age and glued them in place - using my usual trusty sets of dies

- then die cut an oblong using a die from the Lil'Inkers 'Stitched Rectangles' set of dies and a last little piece of pale pink card

- used the Misti and the matching 'Creative Corners' to stamp the sentiment using Versafine 'Vintage Sepia' ink and a stamp from the Penny Black 'Special Thoughts' sentiment set

- fixed the sentiment panel in place using thick sticky pads to act as a 'prop'

Adding the white ribbons with some careful trimming worked wonders - but, truth be told, I found this to be a hard die to work with. It cuts brilliantly but one really shouldn't need to do all the eyeball trimming and tweaking I resorted to. Bit of a thumbs down for one of my favourite range of dies there I'm afraid, sigh.

After taking the photo I did add some clear Wink of Stella to the white ribbons to give them a bit of a satin sparkle :) It probably wouldn't have shown up on the photo in any case.

Next Birthday coming up is Mia's younger sister Olivia. That's going to be so different - think football, horses, scuffed knees, dragons and such, then you'll be on the right track! I might need to shout for help from Len!

What peculiar weather we're having - it's impossible to really plan full open air days so for now our trip to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is on ice. Ha, the following week is half term when we usually avoid being swept along in hoards of kiddywinks. We'll see - decent weather is the most important thing. I can always take a little pitchfork to move the little perishers out of the way!

Wasn't that yellow/orange sky amazing on Monday!? 

As I type this am a little bit behind on Playground commenting - never fear, Parsnip and I are watching what's going on and I'll be hopping about your blogs ASAP. He really is a school sneak if he thinks there's any rattling of bottles behind the bike shed!