No layers for Mel

I know I'm a bit late posting this, but I've had a few people asking if I've put these cards on my blog yet, so here they are! Better late than never...

A couple of weeks ago now Mel set a challenge to use no layers - eeek I thought, how am I going to do that??? Anyway, I came up with a few cards (plus, it was a way of not writing my assignment, which really SHOULD have taken priority). The first one is the one I actually submitted, and the other two, well, they just evolved.

I love the Baroque background stamp, but really haven't used it anywhere near as much as I would have liked, so here it is stamped in Ballet Blue on Very Vanilla. I cut around some of the image so it would give the card some dimension and traced around the edge of the feathers with a silver pen, to link in with the silver brads. While I was in the middle of making this, a friend of mine rang to say she was engaged, so I thought this would be perfect for her (she's not a girly-girl at all), hence the greeting using Wonderful Favourites (it's a tad hard to see, but it says To a Wonderful Couple - I would have used Very Vanilla for couple if I had it). After submitting it to Mel's challenge, I added a backing piece of brushed silver behnd the cut outs.

This was actually the first card I thought of for this challenge and uses Solemn Stillness with Handsome Hunter and Sage Shadow. I really like the effect of embossing the squiggle tree over the darker background. I used the faux tearing technique for the background with Sanded but in hindsight think it may need something a bit fuller like Paisley.... All was finished with Silver Hodgepodge.

This was my last attempt and it almost didn't happen because I was behind on writing my assignment. I masked an oval (actually the 0 from the On Board Simon Lower Chipboard) and stamped flowers from Time Well Spent in Rose Red, Tempting Turquoise, Garden Green and Green Galore for the background. 'Friends' in the main greeting was coloured using a blender pen and ink pad and I doodled inside the masked oval for a bit of definition. I really am quite happy how this turned out - considering Gestational Diabetes was the main topic on my brain at that moment!