Tea Party - Teacups

I have used the sketch over at Sketch Saturday this week for my teacup themed card, made especially for my sister-in-law's birthday as she collects cups & saucers. I have used an image from Nutcrafters called 'Tea Party' which I did of course, colour with Promarkers. Did the teapot pour itself in Alice in Wonderland? Couldn't recall but thought that perhaps it had - years & years since I read it, but a conclusion I came to as I couldn't see this gal's fingers on the handle.  I decided to go with the' magical teapot pouring itself' option  - even though it looks as if she is raising her arm up to me! LOL. I chose my papers carefully to go with the inspirational image from the Ribbon Girl challenge & which was just so perfect for my chosen theme. I created the main, striped design paper myself to give myself the exact background I wanted.   I did this using the Silhouette Studio software making stripes of different widths & dashed stitch-like lines too (all added with cut-lines turned off of course) to the blue rectangle beneath.  Reminded me of ticking fabric given the colour-way. I kept the layering simple & uncomplicated to go with the less complex design sketch which I rotated & the sentiment is from Bird's Cards. Silhouette users will have probably noticed that the image was cut using my Cameo to protrude slightly from the otherwise rectangular mat.

The inside of my card is just a little more complex. Still in keeping with my chosen teacup theme, the Mad Hatter's pile of cups in the image is echoed in the cut-file pop-up design (from the Silhouette Store). More matching paper following the Wedgwood china colour scheme, this time actually printed onto the reverse of my card base itself. This then peeks through the cut-work design to give my 'China cups' some colour. Below this I created a layered pocket (reminded me of stacked crockery in itself as I had used pure white card on the inside, but that is probably my own mad imagination coming to the fore, LOL), again using a sentiment  from Bird's Cards.  These mats were then attached at the requisite 3 edges using thin foam. I needed this bit of dimension so I could easily slot in my 'tea-bag' message tags.

The layered 'teabag' tags.

The 'tea' "letting the flavour flood out", LOL, comprises of little cut-outs from my tea-bag shape with a layer of card underneath coloured brown using a Promarker. This was sandwiched between the blue outer tea-bag & the front. Another tea-bag shape including a sentiment from Scrapalicious (print & cut) was then attached to the reverse before my baker's twine was knotted onto the top. I then made a second tea-bag tag this time incorporating my SIL's name on the front & chose a font to do this which 'sort of' matched the fonts used on the sentiments.

Thanks for visiting my blog & thank you in advance for your comments too.

Tine :)

Challenges I wish to enter this card for are:
Sketch Saturday - design sketch
Ribbon Girl - photo inspiration (spooled item - baker's twine)
One Stop Craft - make your own background (main striped background)
Silhouette Blog - interactive element
Silhouette Challenges - faux stitching using Silhouette (dashed lines on the design paper I created)
Digi Sketch - layer it up &/or sketch
Creative Card - blue/pink or/& baby
My Craft Creations - use a die (digital die cutter)
Deep Ocean - blue

Ribbon Girls

Inky Impressions - birthday
Craft Your Passion - happy birthday
Little Red Wagon - tags
Scrapper's Delights - inspired by a song (Tea for Two - Doris Day)
Creative Craft2 - blue & brown
Paper Shelter - anything goes
Crafts & Me - anything goes
Colour Me Creative - use markers (Promarkers ) - anything goes
Divas By Design - anything goes.