200 Weeks of Inspiration - Take two!!

Pinterest. I LOVE it and its certainly helping me at the moment with getting my creative groove on again.....

Yesterday I did a post about challenge card that relates to a Pinterest Board. Over on Kara's blog K and R Designs she is celebrating her 200th week of the Friday Inspiration File. The 'File' is her Pinterest board of cards that catch her eye when visiting blogland and she posts about the updates each Friday. To celebrate her nearly 4 yrs of 'inspiration collecting' she is having a challenge and giveaway. Kara is wanting you to choose a card from the 'File' and link your 'CASE' to her blog. 

After finding the card I wanted to CASE for yesterdays post, I carried on looking and came across another card that I fell in love with. Its by Donna Mikasa who I've admired for a long time and love her designs. I love the colours on this card, the gold, the embossing, the vellum...oh I love it all!! Here is my version:

Donna used a beautiful background stamp on her card. Unfortunately I don't have any large stamps but I had a brand new stamp set with this diamond which is similar to the stamp pattern. I hope Donna would approve!!!

I started by stamping the diamonds in Versamark Ink and embossing in gold. I then used my mini Distress Ink pads to watercolour each diamond. I then cut a piece of vellum to cover the whole card front, which softened the bright colours. The sentiment stamp was stamped again in Versamark Ink on white CS and embossed in gold. I then had to cut it out by hand and adhered it with some foam tape. Lots of gold, aqua and pink sequins seemed the perfect finishing touch. Thank you Donna for the inspiration!!!

The diamond stamp is from Whimsy Stamps 'Thanks a million' and sentiment stamp from Jillibean Soup 'Birthday'. The gold sequins are from Neat and Tangled, aqua sequins from Avery Elle and pink sequins from Pretty Pink Posh.

Since I've used some gold I'm going to link to the AAA Card Challenge # 31 where their theme is:

I will also link to the Simply Create Challenge # 76 where their theme is 'Lets Celebrate', where my Happy Birthday card hopefully fits the bill. 

My wonderful friend Darnell is having another NBUS Challenge # 3 where her theme is 'Anything Goes'. If you haven't come across NBUS before, its short for 'Never Before Used Schtuff' which all of us crafters have somewhere. I'm using my new Whimsy Stamps set and a Jillibean Soup set which has been unused for months..... She is giving away 'ten x $25 Stamplorations Gift Cards' which is incredibly generous.

And of course I can't forget the Simon Says Stamps - Wednesday Challenge where their theme is 'Anything Goes'. This is my second entry.

Right, that's enough of all that! After linking all of this I'm off to visit blogland and catch up on some emails. I wanted to try making a few more cards but just remembered I need to write a challenge blog post for tomorrow night. There are just not enough hours in the day already and its still the holidays....eeekkk!

Take care
Shona