A Purple Patch

Daring Cardmakers Day today and a busy old intro for the new dare on the blog!

   We say a fond farewell to January's Guest designer Caz - who's been fab, and brought  her wonderfully distinctive style to the blog - thanks Caz!

   We say Hello not to just one, but to two new Guest Designers who aren't really "new" at all as both have joined us as GDs before - but you can't have too much of a good thing, so Nat and Asia are back for a second visit and will both be staying for the next two months - it's going to be fabulous to have them sharing their wonderful  cards with us for an extended period, we're sooooo lucky

   If that wasn't enough, we have a rather tasty little Lucky Dip prize on offer this week - it's from the lovely David and Brenda of Craft Obsessions online craft shop - you'll have to pop over to the DCM BLOG to find out all about it.

  Then there's our new dare of course, which as it's the first Friday of a new month means we're continuing with this year's Monthly Birthstone sequence.  February's birthstone is the Amethyst and I thought I might do something  less obvious than just use the colour.  So I looked into the mythology and meanings surrounding the birthstone. 

"February Birthstone - Properties of the Amethyst
For those who were born in the month of February the Amethyst is the traditional birthstone. The February birthstone poem reflects some of the properties with which the Amethyst is associated - stability, peace, balance, courage, inner strength, sincerity and a calm disposition. The healing properties of the February birthstone are reputed to be effective for health problems relating to the withdrawal symptoms of any sort of addiction,  headaches, insomnia, arthritis, pain relief, circulatory system issues and general healing. The Amethyst is also referred to as the the "sobriety stone" as it was once believed to prevent drunkenness and used to treat alcoholism and other types of addictions."

hmmmm , interesting.  I then decided that it all sounded far too difficult and I reverted to the colour theme instead.  OK so I'm chicken! cluck cluck cluck.

Last month's garnet dare showed me that I actually didn't have much in the way of red coloured papers.  This month's has shown me that I don't have much in the way of purple either.  So what colours are actually in all those boxes and bags of paper then?  It's all very curious.

Purple is one of my most favourite colours, but I do find it quite tricky to use on cards without them ending up looking funereal iykwim or just a total mess.  So for this card I've gone with mainly white with just a "dusting" of the purple.

I've  used a few of my old favourites; the pleated paper strip with the pleats plumped up and the good old coiled paper flowers make a come back appearance, along with various flowers, some ribbon, buttons and brads.

The aperture is cut with a Nesties die, I backed it with a piece of acetate to which I added a couple of the new rub on stickers I made at the weekend; the sentiment and the little swirl (which was from a dingbat font)

 

I added the same Nesties shape cut in purple paper to the inside of the card, then used the die upside down in the aperture to draw in the purple border.  

Flowers are a mix of wired paper flowers, a paste flower cut down a bit to fit better, coiled flowers and a rosette made from organza ribbon.  A bit of inking around the edges was used to pull the various shades together.  I hope it all works okay

Please head across to the DCM BLOG  and see all the lovely cards made by the DT this week, to find the links for our lovely new GDs and of course to read about the prize we've got up for grabs this week.

 

Hope you have a great day today and a lovely weekend - oooh look!  the sun is coming out......