Outside My Comfort Zone

My aunt's neighbour is very kind and often makes meals for her.  Last year my aunt commented on how dressed up she was when she brought her a full meal on a tray so she could share their celebration.  My aunt is in her 90s and didn't really understand what it was all about, but I've since figured out it must have been Eid, so I thought I would try and make a card this year for her to pass to the neighbour if she brings her food again.  I'm totally out of my cultural comfort zone as I don't know the traditions associated with the festival which is coming up in a few days so I reached out to our VIPs group to make sure I didn't use any colours that would be inappropriate.   Purple and Gold seemed like a safe suggestion so I decided to make something with a little bling.

I used an old alphabet die to spell out my words, and decided the mosaic dome die from Altenew would be a good focal element.  I wanted to use gilding flakes to bring the bling, and if you've not had sucess with them in the past using wet glue, which has to be just dry enough to still be tacky but not too wet or the flakes don't stick, then double-sided adhesive sheets are a game changer! 

I covered a sheet of thin white card with adhesive and then used my rectangle dies (two close together to get a frame), the dome and the alphabet all from the same rectangle in the middle of my frame to die cut all the elements.   Then it's just a case of peeling off the carrier sheet and rubbing the gilding flakes in.   So much quicker and easier than faffing with glue.  I used a gold and copper mix which I think has added a really celebratory feel to the elements.

To create the card I used the same rectangle dies to cut a larger base and a smaller inner panel from purple card - both are from the same colour sheet as I didn't have two shades of purple that were the tonal values I wanted.  So all I did here was use the chisel tip end of a copic in the darker purple to shade just the edges of the base layer.  You don't have to be too neat - the inner panel will cover up the messy inner edge.  

Its quite a simple design but I'm pleased with how it turned out - fingers crossed I got the cultural tone correct.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

If you aren't in our VIPs Facebook group then you will have missed this weeks saga of "where is the Concord and 9th colour release"   It shipped on Tuesday in 8 large boxes but to date we've only had 6 of them.  Some went via Leipzig (not as strange as it sounds - DHL often use that airport to get stuff from the USA to the UK) some via Heathrow some via East Midlands!   It does look like one box is still at East Midlands today and one has made it to the Leeds depot (our nearest DHL hub) so I'm hopeful that the final boxes will be out for delivery tomorrow.   We've got as much prepped as we can so that we can get it in store as soon as we check it off - so keep an eye out on the store tomorrow afternoon.

Mama Elephant - again we've had issues with that this week.   It was shipped experimentally by Mama Elephant using UPS - it normally takes around 5 days to reach us - this has been in transit for almost 2 weeks and still not here.   Let's just say we won't be using UPS again!  That should hopefully arrive by 7pm tomorrow - so we'll try and get that in store Tuesday/Wednesday.

The Greetery also have a FABULOUS new release upcoming next week - can't say what for now, but you're going to love it!   Hopefully we'll have it within a few days of the release date.

That's all for today.

Happy Crafting!

Tara