Supportive Card

A friend of ours is walking in the Weekend to End Breast Cancer for the second time (wow!). We're going to one of her fundraisers soon so I wanted to bring her a card for encouragement. I had already used Causabella for her last walk, so I thought I would do something else. I thought of the marvellous bra cards I'd seen on splitcoast and various blogs. These are too numerous to mention individually, so consider this a great big thanks to all of you for your inspiring posts, most especially Frances in Australia for her easy-to-use template.

The card base is Blush Blossom, and the bra is made from a pretty rose petal patterned paper. I sponged in a bit of cleavage using blush blossom and creamy caramel, accented with a bit of versamark dazzle for shimmer. Word of caution when sponging: you are only one dab away from going from saucy to bad rash. (Yes, you may correctly infer that this is card number two.)

I accented the paper piecing with some sheer ribbon, which I ruched myself. (This was a royal PITA! Basically, I used a long straight stitch and gathered it up. But it's really cheap ribbon so it doesn't sew or gather nicely. And I used up my bobbin thread so sewing machine #2 is now out of commission - see quilted teddybear post for demise of #1 - until I can remember how to wind the bobbin. Luckily in-house sewing machine support will be here in a few weeks if I can't figure it out.)

I did persevere on gathering the ribbon because it just looked so amazing. How I suffer for my art! The ribbon is held in place with sticky strip. I had planned to use the same kind of ribbon for the straps, but the final length of gathering didn't go well for me (thread snapped, and I almost did too) and frankly I didn't have the patience to baste by hand. So, paper straps it was!

The final accents were a little pink breast cancer ribbon and a flower with rhinestone centre for the middle, which nicely hides the ribbon ends. I love how the ribbon pushes up on the edges of the flower making it look like it's nestled right in. It's a Pretties kit flower that was hanging around in the box, already dyed, just waiting for a home on a project. I love it when an orphaned embellishment finds a good home!

I used my Karen Foster snap stamps to spell out "a message of support" inside, being one who is unable to resist a pun, especially a bad one. Also there had to be some stamping on here somewhere!

Thanks for stopping by. I do feel I must say that in real life the colours are better. I really must get myself a light box. And find the thingy that goes with the camera into the computer. And find the tripod. (You can see why I use my scanner, which is attached to the computer already!)

Supplies: Paper: blush blossom, spring petals (Pamela Woods - creative imaginations); ribbon - Michael's; Pretties kit flower dyed with riding hood red, rhinestones.