Blossoms and Blooms and a little birdie

Today sees the start of our new monthly challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes are Dies and Punches and Blossoms and Blooms.

The new computer is up and running although I think it will take me some time to suss out Windows 8, it's so very different to Vista and so far it won't accept my e.mail account which is also my work one so need to get to grips with that today.

It's something other than a card for my Stamping Sensations piece, a chipboard flower lovingly inked with almost everything I could lay my hands on including gilding wax and crackle medium. I stamped and embossed around the edges with black and gold, I also added some text stamping but that seems to have disappeared, but that on the birdie does still show OK. Dies cut leaves and bird, the larger roses made with a punch, some ribbon and a little cameo which I also glitzed up with some gilding wax.

For my first Penny Black piece I have used several stamps from the new Happy Everything range, Penny Black 3737K Red Tango, 4383K First Dance, 4378K Hollyhocks, 40-282 Twirls and 30-229 Special Wishes. I created the four way card base on the Cricut and spellbinder for the handing elements........I have since found a Sizzix die that does it all for you so between them gives a shape option.

And I had to do an inky one using Dylusions Lemon Zest, Squeezed Orange and Cut Grass. I then used a stencil to create the distressed sun rays, applied distress markers to the Penny Black Daffodils stamping several times, used archival coffee to stamp the Penny Black Wordsworth poem and finally some random stamping with textured background stamps and two butterflies which are also Penny Black.

I do hope you will join in with our challenges this month, as always we have some awesome prizes to be won.