A String of Pearls

In the year 2000 hubby and I took off on a Round the World Trip, we spent spent just 6 weeks away and we visited just a few places; Singapore, Australia (Port Douglas, Alice Springs, Uluru), Fiji, The Cook Islands and the USA (San Francisco, New York)

Most places we stayed 3 days, some we stayed for 6 and for some reason we managed 7 on Raratonga in the Cook Islands - I think it was something to do with crossing the dateline. This is a roundabout way (pardon the pun) of getting to the subject of pearls.  I love pearls and I was determined to get some black pearls when we were in Raratonga.  There aren't many shops there, but pretty much every other one of them is a pearl shop - and you can buy your pearls in one place and have them made into jewellery in another if you want - I wanted some dangly pearl earrings.  After a lot of looking around and talking about what I wanted one of the pearl shops contacted us to say they had a pair of pearls that had been set aside but hadn't been collected by another customer.  They were a lovely dark greeny black colour and were a bit bigger than I was originally looking for but that wasn't a problem.  We took them to one of the jewellers and the following afternoon I collected my lovely new earrings.

They are a fab reminder of our stay on the Cooks, such a gentle, pretty island and rather quirky too - just the sort of place we love.

It's pearls we're celebrating on the Daring Cardmakers this week:

So here we are in the sixth month of the year (isn't 2010 whizzing by?).
The birthstone for June is the
Pearl
We'd like you to use lots and lots of beautiful pearls on your cards this week - or maybe you'll take inspiration from Pearls in another way, for instance the Pearl symbolises loyalty, faithfulness and friendship and is associated with modesty, chastity and purity.

There are soooo many pearls and pearl embellishments around at the moment that this challenge is bang on trend (how lucky is that then!) and we're all looking forward to seeing fabulous pearly creations.

Card A was a bit of a failure, so it was back to the drawing board yesterday and this is my second attempt.  

 I'd already made the paper roses so they were definitely not going to be wasted.  I also recycled the pearly braid, blue ribbon and flat backed pearls from the original card.

Green background paper is from Crate Paper, I did sone pretty heavy distressing around the edges and curled the corners and edges a bit too.

The corrugated cardboard piece was painted with acrylics in pink, hyacinth blue and white.  I had the image of  peeling paint on a garden gate where many layers of pastel colours had been used over the years.

The lace was a scrap left over from another project and turned out to fit perfectly.

 Also used: Several different Prima flowers, tiny flat-backed white pearls and larger pink pearls, pearl bead strings, White Ice Stickles

I think I should have added a scrap of ribbon to the sentiment piece too - I might do that later!

If you think you've seen this LO before, then you might be right.  I used one of my favourite sketches which you can see by clicking HERE and scrolling down the the bottom of the first page.

Over on the DCM BLOG you'll find a whole string of Design Team Pearls and news that not only is May GD Andrea sticking around for another month but we also have a fabulous new Guest Designer who's come to play with us this month - you'll have to visit the blog to find out who it is though!

I've still got blog-hopping catching up to do - but I will get there eventually, I promise.

Hope the sun is shining where you are today

Thanks for looking