The Flower Challenge #49 Circles/Circle and a Birthday Celetration

It's a special month this month. Not only do we have a lot of prizes up for grabs but its four years since I decided to try running a challenge.

I can never thank the girls that I approached to be on the team enough for believing in this challenge and me. So much has changed over the last four years, the main thing being I had to take a big step back due to taking on the caring for mum and dad then dealing with not only their passing but the passing of my husbands parents and my best friend.

I was able to grieve and hold onto life due to so many of my internet friends being there for me and we were able to keep the blog going due to the fantastic Viv who stepped up and took over the running, kept everyone happy and designed and beautified  the blog itself.  I can never thank Viv enough for being there for all of us but I can publicly tell her she is totally amazing and she is never ever allowed to quit xx

If you have been to The Flower Challenge first you will find the following information is a copy of what Viv wrote there and you can just scroll past down to my card and the many photos I took to show it off to its best.

It's our 4th Birthday too!

It would be great if you could add our cue card above when entering our challenge.
Of course most of all....have fun!

Lots of exciting news from us this month, sorry if it's a long post!

First more news about our Design Team, as we have had Rachel and Karen sadly leave us recently we  have decided to replace one of them now. Ten seems to be the ideal number we are finding re showcasing etc. Anyway we are very happy to announce that the amazing Loll Thompson from 'Stamping with Loll' is joining our team.

I am sure you will all give her a very warm welcome ;)

Next we are happy to say that we are celebrating our 4th Birthday this month! Whoo hoo!! Can't believe it's been 4 years already. What a super team of talented girls we have here too, they are all just amazing! I am sure you have loved seeing all their fabulous floral creations in our gallery. Not to mention all the inspiration from all of you too! We hope you will continue to share with us in the coming months/years also ;)

So to celebrate we are giving away PRIZES for SEVEN of our lucky winners this time. Our main Winner and to 6 others who make it to our showcase this time also. We have decided to choose our winners rather than using the random chooser thingamajig! 

This month we are being sponsored again by the amazing Alex Syberia, she designs such fabulous digi images. Do check them out if you haven't already and what glorious flowers she designs too!

Alex is kindly giving us a coupon for $10 to one of our lucky winners to use in her store.

Also 'The Flower Challenge' is giving away 6 other prizes to our chosen winners also, see all the prizes listed below.

So the top seven people we choose will each win one of the prizes below. We will allocate them ourselves randomly. If you have any of the prizes on offer already, please state that in your post so if chosen you won't get the same one allocated. Or state which you would like ...but if several choose the same prize you will be given one randomly of course ;)

I have used the Wistful Rose from The Ton I heat embossed on white card stock and vellum in silver.

I cut a circle out of the rose on the white cardstock so I could have the vellum rose

show through from inside the card.

Here you can see afrer watercolouring the rose image with my Zigs all the sparkle that is all over the petals as I used the Nuvo Shimmer to move my colours around. In this photo it looks like I got the silver embossing powder all over the place but thats actually glitter and all the petals look like this but the photo struggled to catch the sparkle.

You will notice here I ended up cutting out the embossed flower on the white cardstock because as usual I never thought about the fact that the coloured image needed to line us with the white card and that made that layer crooked on the card front. Luckily I was able to cut it out without loosing any pieces and matched them up perfectly with the vellum coloured image.

Celebrate is on the outside of the card and inside I stamped

a wonderful sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio

Today is a 

good day

to have a

good day.

Stamped in silver ink and then heat dried.

The vellum rose is fussy cut out and then glued in place. Looks fantastic IRL.

To finish it off I added lots of purple cabochon shaped gems. Who's been watching The Antique Roadshow and loves the way one of the specialists say 'Cabochon' MEEEEEEEE

I really enjoyed making this card and my circle is very obvious  so now its time to go check out what the Design Team has been up to and then join us for our FOURTH BIRTHDAY

Crafty hugs

Aileen