Anniversary Card !

Hello ! Not so windy today thankfully but very mild for September, which is wonderful as a nice September makes the colder seasons shorter, if you get my drift !!!
I have a short post for you today featuring a card I made for our 28th Wedding Anniversary. I kept it bold and simple and used a large die cut flower off centre as the main focus . This was cut and embossed and then highlighted with some metallic grey ink.

The background was stamped with a flourish in pale grey and I added some bling to enhance and also stamped a sentiment in black.

The leaves behind the flower were cut from a punch I own which produces a lovely strip of foliage which I use on all sorts of projects and I could see that it would be very versatile when I bought it. Crafting tools and equipment are very expensive so my advice to you if you are starting out would be to always buy the best you can afford and when choosing say a stamp or punch set try to see if there are different ways you can make use of it. So, using the punch used above , I can use it as intended as as a strip of foliage which I can cut to any length, the "waste" can be used as a stencil or mask to use with inks or chalks to produce a decorative border. The strip can be cut up as I have done to make smaller embellishments and coloured in different inks; I could have drawn a circle on a card and arranged the short pieces to form a wreath by overlapping them ( make sure the pieces all go around in the same direction ! ) and then added some bead berries. Another idea is to arrange small pieces to form the canopy of a tree ~ think outside the box and get mileage from your equipment !

 So much for my short post; hope my waffle has been of some constructive help !!!

I have couple of covered books to show you and some cards made using a range of stamp sets from Stampin' Up over the next few days so do pop back to have a peek ! Thank you for stopping by ! Hugs Jane x