Soft Focus

Hello

Okay, it's time to give myself a good shake and stop feeling sorry for myself!  I can't do anything about the horrible Autumn Glooms and I've wallowed long enough - time to put it out of my mind and focus on something else.  Christmas is coming and all the glittery, shiny stuff it brings should help, shouldn't it?

First job is to catch up on blogging some things I've made over the last month or so, starting with a birthday card I made a few weeks back.  I had such a fun time making this one!

Info
I used a gorgeous Digital Download paper from OhLaChic set by Fox Digitals' LoveJunkJournals, via Etsy. I adore the soft colours and subtle designs.
I knew I wanted to make an eclipse card, and with the vintage mannequin design in the corner, and other collage style elements this paper makes a perfect backdrop.

I resized it to fit my card before printing onto textured Bazzill white card, then die cut the 'HAPPY' letters before adhering the paper to my card.
Next I die cut the letters 3 more times from plain blue-grey card and added the top layer of the patterned paper letters. These were then glued into their spaces on the card.

The flowers are made from matching pink, blue and grey cardstock, with stamens added to some.
Gold card was used to die cut some swirls, the body for the butterfly and the 'Birthday' word

The flowers were arranged in the corners with the leafy swirls tucked beneath

The butterfly was die cut from a second printout piece of the same paper.and layered over the butterfly that is on the paper design

To finish and pull the whole thing together I wrapped gold twine around the top of the card and tied a double bow 

I really love making cards like this, especially when the design on the paper and all the 'smudgy' colours make such a fabulously inspiring backdrop for adding all the extra bits and pieces.  
And of course, I love making little paper flowers and adding swirly elements to show them off.

Anyway, that's my lot for today, thanks for visiting, leave a comment and I'll pop over to visit your blog asap! In fact I'm off now to do some blog-hopping 
which I've also neglected recently.

Happy Crafting!