Secret Garden Peeker

Some of you will remember during last Summer, we discovered Misty, our neighbours cat, peeking at us from her perch on a compost bin through a little gap in the fence if we were sitting out in the garden. That led to much hilarity and me going and peering back at her when she was having a right old nosey :)

Bernie then tipped me off about the stamp I've used for today's card. It's designed by Elisabeth Bell (stocked by Quixotic Paperie in the UK) so I immediately sent off for it last August - shame on me I then popped it into my 'to use' basket. On Tuesday I finally inked it up and everything to make the card was lying on the desk all ready for action on WOYWW - so I finally made a card:

Not content with inking up a gorgeous stamp for the first time, I also followed a challenge that I wanted to enter. It's the current Elisabeth Bell Challenge where the theme is Tic, Tac, Toe - meaning you have to choose three items to add to your card from a grid. Eeek, this was getting trickier by the minute! I dithered, as usual, before choosing flowers, lace and pearls, possibly as usual too :).

I used:

- 6" x 6" square white card stock

- backing paper from the Prima 'Annalee' pack (sent to me by Dee) and baby pink Core'dinations card

- SCACD 'Secret Garden Peeker' stamp designed by the so-talented Elisabeth Bell. Sky and ground coloured with TH Distress Inks then coloured with Pro Markers and die cut with a Nestie. I cut the backing card following Sandra's tips for cutting a narrower border, which you can see here.

- flowers from stash - and I'm pretty sure at least some of the flowers also came from Dee :)

- pearls and white lace were snipped from a large 'Say It In Pearls' embellishment made by Prima that's been glaring at me from the 'use me' basket

- really well hidden there's also some pink edged lace and a little bit of pink gingham ribbon which I used to cover the fact that there are two lengths of the pink ribbon laid back to back with straight sides together right across the card. Originally I'd tied a bow with the ribbon but decided it wasn't right

- finally, the sentiment, which says 'Hello You' appropriately enough, is from Craftwork cards

I can see this stamp being trotted out a lot more here - it was a delight to use. Another time I'm gonna keep it simpler though :) 

As if all that wasn't enough - in the process of adding the flowers I also managed to burn the end of a finger with the glue gun:(

Di

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