As We March Into March...

Yup, MARCH already, eek!!  Being the start of a new month means the start of a new challenge at Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge, as always the "theme" is to use Patterned Paper somewhere on your creation.  I made a card for my hubby and my (not sure of the grammar there, lol) 38th Wedding Anniversary last week.  These colours were the colours we had for our wedding, so of course our anniversary card is always based on these :-)

I thought I'd do a cut-out card, using acetate - the photo isn't the best quality I'm afraid, I took this one in my photo tent and didn't get around to redoing it!
The cuter than cute image is from The Paper Shelter, it's called Jurassic Love (I said to my hubby that being married this long these days makes us practically dinosaurs in the marriage stakes!) it's available here.  The Paper Shelter  has "Animal Magic" as it's challenge theme this time around so I'm entering there.  Cutie Pie Challenge  has All You Need is Love, while Great Impressions has Any Celebration as their challenge theme, so I'll be entering them too.
I DID manage to re-take the picture of the inside, which shows that cute image off much better, I coloured - as usual - with Copics and Prismacolor pencils.  There's lashings of glossy accents on the eyes, toenails and hearts. 

The patterned paper is from Die Cuts With a View's Once Upon a Time collection, I love it - then again I would, wouldn't I? this being my favourite colour combo and all :-) Cute Card Thursday has Florals so I'm entering there. I used a textured paper to mat this time, it is really quite fibrous and has a nice glitteriness about it that is hard to pick up in photos.

I've added a detail shot of the eyes. If there's enough "room" in the image I like to finish the eyes like this, it just adds a little "something" - looks more realistic; not that I REALLY know what a dinosaur's eyes look like or whether the ladies wore ribbons in their "hair" lol.

The ribbon is from my stash, I used my Bow-Easy to tie the bow, Inky Chicks wants to see Ribbon and/or lace, The charm is from my stash too - it's quite heavy, which in this case is a good thing as it helps to keep it vertical. Creatalicious Challenge wants to see a charm and Polkadoodles has a Tic Tac Toe challenge; I've used Charms/Animal/Sentiment line.
I added the last of my self adhesive flat backed pearl "string" to the edge of the heart on the inside and outside of the card to neaten that up... these things are great, I really will have to try and source some more of them, especially in this size.

I stamped the sentiment directly onto the card, but it was very crooked.  So I stamped some squiggles on some cream card using the edge of a small floral die from Kaisercraft in different colours of Stazon; burgundy, black and Timber Brown - I took the excess ink off the stamp first so that it wasn't too strong - then I stamped the sentiment using brown pigment ink, distressing the edge with the same ink to soften the effect.  Actually considering it was to cover a botch up, I was quite happy with it.  I used my latest "tool", my Stamp-a-Ma-Jig.... and I still managed to get it a bit crooked, ah well, it's better than the version stamped on the card!! The sentiment on the inside of the card was a freebie from the ever generous Paulette at Created With TLC... one of my all time favourite places for sentiments; Aud Sentiments wants to see "Cute + a Sentiment", tick tick, and Winter Wonderland want us  to Use a Sentiment (this is the last challenge for the year where they don't have a Christmas theme too) so I'm entering there.
Whimsy Inspirations Challenge, Little Miss Muffet, Li'l Patch of Crafty Friends, Simply Papercrafts, That Craft Place, Crafting With Friends, Creative Fingers, Art by Miran, Simon Says Challenge ,Craft Your Passion,  Through the Craftroom Door  all have Anything Goes themes so I'm in there too.

That's about it for today's card, pop over to the blog and check out the rest of the team's inspiration... I hope you get a chance to enter the challenge, there's a great prize on offer as always, and it's such an easy theme :-)  I'll be back very soon with something a little different.  Until then, Happy Crafting, Donna