Paisley from France

We recently spent about eight days between Stasbourg, the Black Forest and Heidelberg, and saw a lovely mix of wonderful scenery and interesting buildings. Of course, there was no way to stop me keeping an eye open for craft shops while I was away, and although I found two, only one had a range of Papercraft things to tempt me. I was interested to note that prices were pretty much Euro for Pounds on a lot of things, although things like sticky gems seemed much more expensive. Anyway, I bought myself a set of clear stamps from a company called Artemio which I hadn't come across before, and last night I had a play with some of them, and my rather limited selection of Distress ink.

I used Wild Honey, Fired Brick and Tattered Rose inks, first making the background which was first sponged with Tattered Rose before being stamped with all three colours and the various 'Paisley' shapes. Then I edged the whole sheet with Wild Honey. For the focus, I stamped mirror image shapes in either Wild Honey or Fired Brick and assembled them into a flower-type arrangement and finished it off with a small image from the set. I mounted the flower on card which I'd previously 'attacked' with the Tattered Rose pad (Sponging the background took forever and I was impatient) and I was rather pleased with the effect that gave.

I've always found Paisley-type designs quite 'busy' so I kept the arrangement quite simple.

I can see this set is going to be used for a lot of backgrounds - it's really quite versatile with all the different sizes and orientations of the shapes!

I'd like to enter this card for the following challenges: Meljen's Design Team which is looking for 'clean and simple',

Stampin Royalty who are asking for you to create your own backing paper,

Creative Inspirations where anything goes, 

SSDS  which is looking for clean and simple, and 

Craftalicious who want us to make our own flowers.