One Stitch at a Time Challenge 167

This week at One Stitch at a Time, our theme is: Pretty it Up! You can do what you want, provided you add something pretty to the mix - flowers, butterflies, glitter ...

Our sponsor this week is:

who are offering some Promarkers as the prize. And who doesn't need a few more of those?

This week, I chose a gorgeous silhouette from Stitchy herself. To be honest, I think it's really pretty on its own, but I added some flowers anyway!

I printed it on my usual favourite Ryman matte ink jet paper and cut the image using a Sizzix die. The paper is from the Papermania Capsule collection. I assembled the flowers using a set of Sizzix dies designed by Susan Tierney Cockburn. I bought one of her books a while ago and have played with making flowers using punched shapes, but to be honest, I only tended to do 'as close as I could' with those due to the cost of punches! Having said that, there were enough ideas that I was able to make some pretty flowers even though they're probably not botanically correct. When she brought out his range of dies, I had to take a look and have bought a few - including the one I used here which is the daisy set. It's probably my favourite because it produces the smallest flowers. Having said that, I intentionally kept them fairly flat so the card will go into an envelope. I dusted the tips of the petals with black pastel, and finished each flower with a dollop of glitter glue. The die cuts at the bottom use silver mirror card, and were also cut with Sizzix dies.

I must say that, when I had my Wizard, I stuck almost exclusively to Spellbinders, Marianne and Nellie Snellen dies. Having bought the Big Shot Pro, I've tried some dies from different manufacturers, including those that have ejection foam, and I've got to say, that it seems like it's a way of ensuring the dies don't last very long. The foam seems to become damaged quite easily, and bits of card can become lodged in the foam. I'd much rather have to poke die cuts out with my trusty poky tool and even use some wax paper for the more intricate dies. I'm very glad the flower dies are from the Sizzix Thinlits range which are more like Spellbinders style - no ejection foam!

I hope you can join us this week!

I'd like to enter the following challenges:

Card and Scrap where they want flowers,
Bearly Mine where they want dies/punches,
Creative Card Crew where they want punches/dies,
Papertake Weekly where anything goes,
4 Crafty Chicks where they want flowers,
Nutcrafters where they want monochrome,
The Paper Shelter where the theme is 'flower power',
The Hobby House where anything goes,
Digi Haven where anything goes,
Totally Papercrafts where they want more than three different dies/punches (flower petals, 2 different leaves, two arched labels, swirls)