Elements for April

Well, what a bad blogger I've been this week! 

I have some catching up to do of other things, but for today it's just my April Elemental Inspiration card for this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge,  The idea is simple and fun, you just have to choose a minimum of three 'elements' from a picture one of us has chosen and use them to make a card of your own.  The pictures always have lots of interesting details, and part of the fun is spotting them and planning how you can incorporate them into a project of your own - I always love seeing how people respond to the photos, which things they choose and how they use them.  There's always some things I didn't even spot at all.

Here is my card

 I chose to use the birdhouses and birds,  the ric-rac braid, the ribbon bows , the flowers  and the pretty pastel colour scheme from Dawn's beautiful Springtime photo:

You'll have to look closely to find the ric-rac, but it's there, and it's what I echoed when stencilling my chevron background, in pastel inks

(Chevron stencil by Prima, VersaMagic and VersaCraft Inks) 

next I used an embossing folder to create the birds and birdhouses - I cut out 3 of the birdhouses plus a few extra bird shapes from the embossed card and inked them over with the same colours as before

(6x6 Birdhouses embossing folder by Crafter Companion) 

The birdhouses were raised slightly on chipboard scraps and glued in place. I made tiny ribbon bows to decorate the poles and added the 'extra cut-out birds to the houses

The leaves and flowers are die cuts and attached behind and in front of the poles to look as though they are winding around, I used 2 shades of  card for the flowers

(tiniest flowers from Cherry Blossom die set, Leafy Swirls, both by Spellbinders )

The sentiment is pc generated, and as it looked a bit bare, I added some tiny bunting cut from card inked with the same colours as before

I love these Spring pastel shades, they are so pretty!  This was such a lovely picture to use, and it was more a case of 'what to leave out' than 'what to use'!  I hope you'll agree and feel inspired to join in this week

Thanks for looking