Damask & Roses Happy Birthday Card - HOC August Sketch Challenge - Classic & Elegant

Throughout August at House of Cards we have a sketch for you to work with - what a wonderful sketch it is too!  At HOC we have either a colour or sketch challenge that runs for the whole month - but we feature four different card styles, one per week, throughout the month.  This week the challenge is for Classic & Elegant cards made with the sketch.

I've already made a Cute & Fun card using this great sketch just as it is but I rotated the sketch for my Classic & Elegant card.  I love damask patterns and they always suggest elegance to me so my starting point for this card was the yellow patterned paper.  I love the colours used on the 'Eastern Elegance' suite pages in the new SU! catalogue - which is a surprise as I've never been a real fan of yellow or grey!  They're lovely with the Coastal Cabana though so I happily added those colours into the mix.  I made a Smoky Slate side opening A6 card base and layered the yellow paper onto a Coastal Cabana mat.  So, the layout and colours were sorted, now it was time to select elegant stamps.  Well, roses are always elegant so I reached for my Stippled Blossoms set, various ink pads and my trusty Stamp-a-ma-jig to get busy two-step stamping.  

I stamped the large rose solid flower in So Saffron ink (stamped off once) and the outline was stamped in Crushed Curry ink.  I stamped the solid leaves in Pear Pizzazz ink (stamped off once) and the outlines in Old Olive ink.  The small solid flowers were stamped in Coastal Cabana ink (stamped off once) and the outlines in full strength Coastal Cabana ink.  I die cut Whisper White and Smoky Slate circles, fussy cut the flowers and leaves and popped them up.  I added flower shaped buttons to the Coastal Cabana strip, stamped and die cut the sentiment label and popped that up also.  I then added some yellow gems to complete the card front.

I cut a Whisper White panel for inside the card, stamped a sentiment and added more flowers and leaves.  I covered the envelope flap with the gorgeous patterned paper to finish off.

I hope you'll join in with us at House of Cards this week, the sketch is a real goodie and I'd love to come and see your Classic & Elegant cards! Everyone is welcome at our House!

Supplies:
Stamps: SU! 'Stippled Blossoms' set, Woodware 'Happy Birthday' clear stamp, Penny Black 'Lovely Day'
CS: SU! Smoky Slate, Coastal Cabana & Whisper White
Patterned paper:  My Mind's Eye Howdy Doody 'Happy' paper
Ink: SU! So Saffron, Crushed Curry, Pear Pizzazz, Old Olive & Coastal Cabana
Tools: Circle Nestabilities dies, Spellbinder's Labels Trio die, Stamp-a-ma-jig
Embellishments & accessories: SU! So Saffron buttons, PaperMania yellow gems, SU! Dimensionals