I've been looking through my photo folder and came across these ones I hadn't posted pre Christmas.  They are for a birthday card and matching gift card holder I made for my youngest sister Melissa.  (They were a bit late - oops - so I wanted to make them EXTRA special.) 

Her favourite colour is purple so I used Elegant Eggplant, and teamed it with Pretty In Pink, Pink Pirouette and Whisper White.  One of my favourite stamp sets is Fifth Avenue Floral so I used that too, plus Sincere Salutations for an elegant greeting.  I used the card on the front cover of the catalogue as my starting point for the design. 

I'd been playing with my spritzer tool so spritzed some Pretty In Pink and Elegant Eggplant onto the flower and background.

The large flower is cut out and layered using dimensionals.

I punched the greeting with the Wide Oval Punch.  I get such a lot of use from that one.  I added some crystals and silver metallic thread stitching for a dash of sparkle.   The mat pack and a paper piercer makes stitching much easier.  I used the template to pierce holes then grabbed a needle and thread to stitch.  A tiny scrap of Pink Pirouette ribbon tucked under the greeting just finished things off.

Part of my gift was a photo shoot session of her boys.  (My Canon camera and I have captured some great pics of kids some days.)  I made my own voucher and popped it into the gift holder I made to match the card. 

The gift voucher is just a piece of white cardstock with Fifth Avenue flowers stamped in the background.  Using my Elegant Eggplant marker helped keep it all looking coordinated.  To make the holder I just folded a piece of cardstock around and taped one end closed.  I just made sure it was a little larger than the gift voucher.  I punched a slot out to make it easy to get to the voucher and added some decorative touches,  and of course a hat pin.

I popped a glue dot behind a couple of the beads to attach it.  The flowers, beads and hat  pin are all from a Pretties Kit - a great kit for adding some elegant feminine touches to your creations.  I spritzed the top flower for some speckle of colour.

I love the new wide Pink Pirouette ribbon from the Summer Mini.

When I was visiting Teneale's blog I saw how she'd added a half pearl on top of a big circle designer brad (pg 148) and thought that looked gorgeous.

You just wrap the ribbon around the gift card then its easy to pull it out using the ribbon.

I'm so lucky to have 2 lovely sisters who live nearby.  Melissa and I both have young children so we are often on the phone sharing the latest funny happenings from our munchkins and sharing 'mum' moments.  

Back soon - thanks for stopping by,

Cheers Sue