By the Cute and Girly January challenge

Happy New Year everyone and wishing you a really crafty and inspirational 2010.

Although this post is being scheduled, when it pops up on my blog it will be time for our new challenge at By the Cute and Girly with the very apt theme of New Beginnings. A pretty open theme really, baby, wedding, new job, interpret as you wish. And the Inspirational Team have again come up with some wonderful work to help get your creative juices flowing so you can get your creations entered to be in with a chance of winning one of the three great prizes on offer this month. The theme this week at Stamping for the Weekend is also New Beginnings and this is my entry for that challenge.

The first of my projects are the wedding invitations I made for our second eldest son and his French fiancee who are getting married in Saint-Gilles, Croix de Vie on the west coast of France in May. Preparations are well under way now and the whole family are beginning to get excited, especially the four girls who are all being bridesmaids. In addition, two friends of the bride are being Maids of Honour (that's what they call the older bridesmaids in France), so there will be six in total. I was so thrilled to be invited to the wedding dress fittings and have seen the design of 'the' dress. The next appointment with the seamstress is in a couple of weeks when the bridesmaids are also having their first fittings.

I created six sample invitations for them and this is the one they selected. I used white linen cardstock, ran the embossed panel through the Bug using the hearts folder, the flowers and leaves have all been created with various punches and luxury finishing touches of Swarovski crystals and silk organza ribbon to carry the colour theme. The wording was stamped with Hobby Art GR201 MC using versafine black and detail clear embossing powder.

In line with French tradition, the invitations went out in November, much earlier than we send them in the UK, with the wording in both French and English. Now all I have to do are the Order of Service cards and Menu's, which will follow the same theme, but be slightly less ornate.