Simply Fabulous

Hi blog friends!  Wasn't it just glorious yesterday!  I looked at blue skies all day long.  Today it's a gala event on the blog, well that's the name of the stamp plate I've used at least!  I finally had a chance to play with this set recently and I am in love with it!  These gorgeous ball gowns are very detailed so I decided to do some paper piecing on them rather than trying to colour in the lines (a good choice given my bad eyesight too! LOL)    The paper I picked for the gown actually has a tone on tone green polka dot on it, you can barely see the design except on the dress bodice, but it matched my background paper nicely.  I have had this paper for awhile and haven't a clue where it came from but I liked it and thought I would finally use it for this card.  Basically if you have never done any paper piecing, you need to stamp your image on a neutral card stock (I used milk) and then restamp it on whatever decorative paper or card you want to use.  Something like this ball gown is perfect for this technique as all you need to do then is cut the dress portion of your stamp out of the decorative paper and glue it on top of the image on your neutral card.  You will probably want to do any colouring before you glue though as it is easier that way.  I coloured the exposed parts of the mannequin before gluing.  I then cut the entire image out with an oval nestability.  I matted it with a larger oval nestie in green.  On the top of the ovals I added a fleur de lis element.  I made a rose from the background paper and then added a few more flowers made from the Bitty Blossoms set.  For the sentiment, I used one of the phrases from the set but it was together so I covered one of the words each time with a piece of tape so that I could stamp each word without the other.  Then I cut them out individually with a fancy tag die.  I centred each word towards one end of the tag, then nipped off the other end so I could mount them both so they were coming from under my flowers.  I added a strip of our black duchess lace and a few black rhinestone swirls for a bit of bling. I tied a double bow out of black silky crush ribbon and added it to the side.   I matted the card in black and pierced the edges to finish off my gala event creation.  Don't you just love that girlie dress!  All for now, Sue x