Introducing... the umbrella frock!

Hello crafting friends!

This is a looooong, picture-heavy post! Do you fancy a cup of something while you're here? Might as well get comfy!

After a long walk this morning with my floofy pal, and a bite of lunch, I settled down in The Craft Square Metre and had a lot of fun making two cards featuring an umbrella. Come and see:

I've kindly paper pieced the umbrella in the same designer paper, so that you can see more clearly what's been going on! The stamp set I used is Under My Umbrella by Stampin' Up and you can see that one of the umbrellas in the set can double up nicely as a frock!

CARD ONE
This is the conventional way of using the stamp set.

I stamped the wellies and the umbrella onto a card panel and coloured the wellies and the ground with alcohol markers. The umbrella was stamped again onto designer paper and cut out with the coordinating punch. The punch also has a handle, so I used it to make the hand grip in the same paper.

I stamped some flowers from the set onto off cuts of card stock, coloured them and fussy cut them. These were used to embellish my arrangement along with a die cut bow from MFT's Birthday Cocktail and a pink enamel dot.

The card panel was cut out with one of my Heffy Doodles Stitched Rectangle dies, and then a smaller one to cut the stamped image out. I replaced the smaller panel inside the larger one and attached them to a card front. A thin black strip of card stock was glued across the front and a block sentiment by Uniko was added to it.


CARD TWO
This is where, by the magic of stamping, the brolly turns into a frock! But first I masked and sponged a background, added flowers from Lawn Fawn's Easter party, and cut a panel out with a Stitched Rectangle die.

For my young lady, I started by masking off the pointy bit of the brolly and stamping it once on designer paper and then again on white card stock. The girl from Clearly Besotted's Fly With Me was stamped above these and I joined the two with a fineliner.

There were fiddly bits to deal with: she's usually a one-armed girl so I had to stamp her again so that I could give her a second arm, which I cut out and glued to her body. Also she didn't have legs so I doodled those in. After I'd reconstructed her (like the bionic woman!) I coloured her with alcohol markers, then cut out the designer paper dress and glued it over the top. She looks quite pleased with it doesn't she?!!

The sentiment is made from Easter Party (wishing you a very happy) and MFT's From Me To You (Birthday) and it was positioned using a stamping platform. The final details were the balloons, cut out of vellum with a balloon punch, coloured on the back with markers and given strings with my trusty fineliner.

EDITED TO ADD AN AWARD
So delighted to be Honourably Mentioned at Freshly Made Sketches for my brolly and wellies card :)

CHALLENGES
It was the Rain/Umbrella theme at the Twofer Challenge that got me going on this so I'm linking both cards there.

Card One:
I used the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches as the starting point to this card; I'm also playing along at Allsorts, where the theme is Flowers and Showers and at Double D where Showers and Flowers are the theme and my card made full use of the gorgeous pink wellies and yellow polka dot bow on the mood board.

Card Two:
I'm joining in with Festive Friday where I chose red, blue, green, hearts and balloons from the inspiration list; I'm also linking up with Handstamped Sentiments where I was inspired by the balloons and birthdays featured on the mood board.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
Today I went on a visit! I was returning a DVD box set that had been lent me by a lovely friend. Now before you send me hate mail and tell me I'm putting everyone in danger, I promise I thought very carefully about what I was doing. I went across my small town by car, stopped outside my friend's house, placed the DVDs in a carrier bag on the doorstep, rang the bell and then scuttled down to the bottom of her path. We then shared a short conversation from afar and then I got in my car and went home. I felt like a proper gad-about!

Have you had a good weekend?

Hugs,