Shabby Chic Card

I am going through a 'shabby chic' phase.  I have so many beautiful paper embellishments and lace it seems a shame not to use them!  I am making this card for a very special person so I can't show the card in its entirety in case they are reading this!  I still need to add gesso and glitter highlights.  It has been fun to make but taken me best part of a day so far!

This month is my 9th anniversary of blogging.  Time certainly flies when you are having fun - it's true!  Hopefully this year I will reach the mile stone of 1000 posts!   Thank you for those that continue to read and leave comments, especially my long time commenter's - you all know who you are!

Have a lovely weekend!

Buying The Best You Can Afford

'Buy cheap and you buy twice.'  I can't remember where I heard that saying but from my experience it is true.  Over the years my craft space has been filled up with things that I have bought because they were a 'bargain' but I haven't used because I have felt the quality to be inferior and therefore less pleasurable to use.  Recently I bought some 'gorgeous' paper flowers from a TV shopping channel that certainly did not live up to the description.

Over the last couple of weeks I have discovered a *wonderful company that specialize in paper flowers and have been overjoyed with the quality.  I have pictured the ones that I bought above and I know that I will buy from them again.  In addition to flowers I have bought exquisite guipure lace and vintage seam binding and am going to embark on making some shabby chic style cards.  In the past I wasn't a fan of the shabby chic style but recently I have seen some beautiful examples using the flowers and embellishments above and I am going to give it a go.

* For those interested the items above came from Wild Orchid Crafts.  

Wishing you all a happy weekend!