Inspiration from crafting friends

I wanted to try something different today and I am a huge admirer of the cards which Katie makes on her blog. I recently won a copy of Quick Cards made easy in which she had two articles and so I thought why not try and make a couple of cards of a similar style. I was looking through the Pink Petticoat blog yesterday too and found this fab freebie download which I have used.

The papers are from Papermania and the cardboard is recycled off a box- can't say it is an old box as it was one I was meant to be packing my things into for moving house soon, but a bit missing from the side in the name of crafting can't be too bad can it? The tissue paper really is recycled from a present that came wrapped in it at Christmas (lucky I hoard things isn't it?).

The digis are coloured with Promarkers and there are 3 tiny gems added to the flowers on the bird for sparkle (a bit hard to see in the picture unfortuantly). I have added little bits of detail round the edge of the card with a black fineliner and inked the edges of the papers in black. The concertina flowers I have tried to make before but they didn't turn out that good in the past. I saw an amazing flower on a card which Wynneth made for this weeks CMLI challenge and so had to give them another go. The trick is using a long enough piece of paper (which I probably didn't and certainly didn't do in the past either).

I'm fairly pleased with these cards and had great fun making them. It is a style which I found I thought I could add what I wanted and there was no 'right' or 'wrong' which was lovely and freeing, if you get what I mean. I'll be testing out with cards like this again in the future I think!