Blog hop: Heat-embossed flower card

Hello you!

If you've dropped by from Debbie's blog as part of the the first Banana Frog blog hop then greetings to you, pause here a while why don't you? Rest those legs.

If you're here by fluke, serendipity, downright nosiness or the wonders of Mr.Google then 'hola' to you too. Everyone's welcome.

And if you dropped by on the off chance that today would be the day that I'd be sharing a project based on something I found inside a pair of men's trousers ... then wow, is today your day or what?!!!

If you're faint of heart, fret not, it's all quite above board because:
[a] they're lovely brand-spanking-new trousers;
[b] they're from Desigual - an amazingly creative brand and;
[c] they belong to my partner of 18 years.

See, nothing untoward going on here, it was all in your head! Now we've got that cleared up, feast your eyes on these delights: Fabulous or what?

From the outside they're a fairly conservative pair of neutral summery trousers, while on the inside there hides the treasures [to a crafty pattern obsessed girl] of a flowery waistband lining and contrasting pockets!
Add in a yummy twill ribbon, a tiny amount of lilac-grey trimming and the brand slogan of '[Desigual]Is Not the Same' embroidered on the pocket ....

.... and my goodness!!! ... Has a man's trousers ever given a girl such pleasure? [Be careful how you answer that!]

My Mr. bought them while we were in one of London's Desigual stores recently. Have you ever been to one of their shops? It's one of the few places on earth where he's failed to find me in a crowd while I've been wearing my yellow coat!

The place is a living kaleidoscope. It's awesome. In every sense of the word.

Needless to say, it was me who'd spotted them and thrust them at him for his perusal. He's colour-blind and I alway feel a responsibility to draw his attention to any anomalies he won't have noticed, so I pointed out that the flowers were actually orange, lime green and purple. My thoughts were that while he may accept their floweriness, the colours may be a bridge too far.

To my surprise he willingly tried them on and bought them despite also being made aware that the turn-ups were lined in the very same fabric. It's enough to make a crafty-girl proud!

OK then, now I've shared the trousers with those of you interested in trousers, I'll move onto the reason the rest of you are here .... the Banana Frog stamped project. This month's theme was 'Flowers':

No prizes for guessing where I got the idea for a loud summery daisy-print design from!

I decorated some textured white card and a chipboard flower using Crafty Notions spray inks; two of the flower stamps from the new 'Super Dreamy' set [you can get 15% off Super Dreamy and Build a Daisy this week using the code M30NEWS at the checkout!]:
... and a lot of embossing powder. A lot!

I used a combination of stamping on the bare chipboard in ink; stamping then embossing; and simply pressing a VersaMark pad onto areas of the chipboard and dousing it in embossing powder:I love how it turned out and all I can say is that if you're a piece of die-cut chipboard within my reach the next time I get crafty .... you're going to find yourself wearing a heavy-duty embossing powder coat my friend! Beware!

If you like the idea of taking inspiration for a craft project from something else entirely [like a pair of trousers!] then you'll like my other blog The Copy + Paste Project. There Kirsty Neale and I share lots of things from outside papercrafting which inspires our artistic work.

Right then, I'll let you go now to the next stop on the hop, which is to see Anthea's blog here :

• If you want to share any of your Banana Frog work then don't forget that there's a Banana Frog Flickr group set up especially for that.
• There's also and a Copy+ Paste one too, into which you can drop your photos of projects inspired by any of our posts.
• Failing that - Tweet me, leave me a comment or send out a carrier pigeon.

Go forth and be inspired crafty types.

But, please, if you're going to go looking inside a man's trousers for inspiration ... be careful won't you? !!

Jx