Oriental Happy Birthday

As one of six children, there are very few months in the year that are free from birthdays and today it's the turn of my baby sister Debbie. 
The oriental card I made uses a selection of Waltzing Mouse Stamps from Claire Brennan's recently released Asian Garden collection,  which were stamped onto red card and embossed with a combination of black and gold embossing powders.    A smidgeon heavy with the gold I feel, but just check out that shine!

The panels were then matted onto black card, followed by gold mirri card, leaving narrow borders before layering onto a white DL card blank.

The sentiment was stamped onto red card,  embossed in black and then lightly rubbed over with a Brilliance Dew Drop gold ink pad before die cutting with Nestabilities - Labels One.  

I matted it onto black card, embossed the edge with gold powder and then placed it over the background strip with foam pads.   The 'Birthday Wishes' part of the sentiment is from WMS Asian Garden, but 'Sister' is one of Papermania's Relations clear stamps, which I know will become a favourite to have close at hand.
Simon Says Stamp are celebrating their 1st Blogaversary and are having an awesome party which includes a Blog Hop and you'd better believe there are loads of fabulous prizes on offer, so I'm going to gatecrash and enter this card into their Birthday/Celebrations Challenge.   Hope there's some red wine on offer as blog-hopping is thirsty work!
A few other challenges are ...
Papertake Weekly Challenge - Shiny and/or Sparkly
Stamp Something - Birthday
Rainbow Lady - Make Your Own Background Paper

Oriental Cards

I was having a little play today, (it was my reward to myself for cleaning the windows LOL!), and managed to make a few Oriental cards using items from the RAK's I received last week.

I confess I've never been particularly drawn towards the 'Oriental' style of card making and that's why I found it quite difficult to come up with anything inspiring.

That will also probably explain why I'm not very comfortable with the finished results.


However ... I had a try and here they are.
Thank you all for looking.

3 RAK's Today

I have got to be having the most amazing week of all time. The postie arrived this morning bearing yet more RAK gifts from my CB friends. And when they were opened they revealed so many beautiful things I'm afraid I had a 'Niagara Moment' ... quite a long one too!

Glitzzy had sent a bumper bundle of oriental goodies, far too many to mention individually but one item in particular was a gorgeous keyring which has a quartz stone encased in a metal spiral globe. Needless to say it is hanging from my car keys already. Thank you Glitzzy ... I will enjoy playing with them all and you may find you and Zheena are responsible for another addiction LOL.

The 2nd RAK was from a very special lady Jules, from Creative Makes. She sent my daughter and I a pony card ... knowing how horse mad my little girl is ... but, more than that, she also included the actual Cuddly Buddly stamp for us to play with! Isn't that a wonderfully kind thing to do? Thank you so much Jules ... we'll have to have a rota for using it I think.

That was when my eyes started to leak.

So by the time I came to open the 3rd RAK, which was from Queenie ... well that was when Niagara started flowing with a vengeance. The envelope revealed a box ... beautifully decorated in friendship papers and a little twiggy heart.

Inside the box was an accordian Friendship Book ... and I can't tell you how gorgeous it is in real life but take a look at the photo ... isn't it amazing?

I have got to be the luckiest lady ever to have such wonderful, kind and generous friends. Thank you all so very, very much.