I met the deadline.

Those of you who visited me on our  Wednesday Workdesk blog hop will know that I had started making a card for our friends' Golden Wedding Anniversary, when I was also asked to make a card for them to be signed by the thirty or so guests at a surprise party for them on Saturday. So first of all I finished my original one and here it is.

As you can see, I again used vinyl cut with my Silhouette Cameo machine. I bought a number monogram set from My Vinyl Designer, but, because each number was in a frame, when I printed the '5' and the '0' together they just didn't look right.

So I opened them in the silhouette software and tried to combine them and that didn't work. Instead I used a combination of photoshop and paint and eventually came up with a '50' that I was happy with. Taking this back into the silhouette software I was able to add names and the other words into the frame, and cut it all out. Once again there was some careful weeding to be done and I then used transfer paper to place it onto some gold mirri-card. This was mounted onto a plain ivory card and that was one finished.

For my second card for the guests to sign, I decided to do a complete contrast and came up with this fussy-pretty one.

I knew it needed to be as large as possible and Spanish 'standard' envelopes are bigger than British ones, so an A4 card has room to spare in them. But from time to time I buy packs of card from Lidl's which are larger than A4 and I was delighted to find that a sheet of this folded in half, fitted my envelope exactly. I used a plain ivory base card and a mat in a very pale green pearl card embossed with flowers. The main image is from  the Heartfelt Creations Bell Rose set, stamped in memento rich cocoa onto white card lightly dusted with memento cantaloupe. The simple flowers are coloured with coloursoft pencils and the panel is cut with Spellbinders Decorative labels 8 die. I cut around the outer edge of the die to make a gold mirri-card mat for it. I then stamped the single rose from the same set twice onto white card and cut one out with the matching die. I cut just the centre section from the other one, and coloured them all with copic markers. I then shaped the layers and decoupaged them onto the panel. I stamped and cut two more butterflies and added one to the panel.

I used the smallest die from Elegant labels 4 to cut the mat for the sentiment which was printed on the computer and hand-cut to fit. I threaded some gold ribbon through the label and glued it across the card. Next I cut to two gold leafy swirls using another die from the Bella rose set and linked them up the side of the card, and then added a paper rose I made from white paper and sprayed with buttercup and bright gold inks. When it was quite dry I filled the centre of the rose with glossy accents and 'floated' a clear gem in it for a dew drop, and also added a small gem to the rose on the main panel. I used some cut-off pieces of the flourish to balance the panel on the right side, and glued the second butterfly to the sentiment label.

It ended up bigger and fussier than I usually make, but it was right for the occasion and they were delighted with both cards.

They were totally surprised to find us all waiting for them at the party and we had a wonderful evening together.

I am entering this in:
Let's Craft and Create Challenge 76; Say it with Flowers. and,
Kort'o'Mania Challenge 91; Flowers.