So much excitement!

Happy Monday!!! So, about all the excitement. This is a picture-heavy post. There will be a card, a tutorial, some pleading and an adorable little creature.

The excitement started on Friday when I found out that I made it to the Paper Crafts Gallery Idol 2011 Top 20!!! Squeal! Many of my sweet friends congratulated already and it means so much to me to see that they are happy for me! So, thank you so much for your support and for not begrudging me this! You can't imagine how much I appreciate it!

This weekend I created my card for the next round of this contest. The theme is selfmade embellishments. I love creating diy embellies, so I loved this theme! The only problem was to decide which one to make! I decided to create flowers, because who doesn't love flowers? And I wanted them to look delicate and elegant. Here is the result:

And a close-up of the flowers:

I really hope you like them! I will show you how I made them in a minute, but first the pleading :) Will you pleeeeeaaaase vote for my card??? I need your help to make it to the next round. Only the 15 cards with the most votes will make it. So now it is your turn to decide what you like best! If you like my card, please go here and vote! Or go here and read more about how to vote. Pretty please? THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Ok, now the tutorial! The flowers are made from Japanese Tissue Paper and I used the Sizzix Alterations die-cut from Tim Holtz called Tattered Flowers:

That Japanese Tissue Paper is more expensive than a normal tissue paper, but it's worth it! It is not tearing and just works great here! Trim 5 layers of the paper and die-cut through all of them:

Your flowers will look like this:

Then go ahead, don't be restrained, and do this to them:

Flatten them again:

And then stack them, but not neatly petal onto petal, but a bit shifted (I hope this is the correct word!):

Finally, take a threaded needle and some pearls and assemble your flower sewing the pearls to the center. Just crumple the petals like you want them to be and voilà!

For the white flower I used the two smallest flower dies together and for the cream flower I used the PTI die from the Beautiful Blooms set. Really easy and I love how they turned out! You could use these on an adorable headband or as a brooch as well.

And now to the cute little creature. I can tell you, my little heart almost broke on Saturday! In the morning I was sitting here with my little girl and we had the window open. I thought our neighbor's dog had this annoying, squeaking toy again, because there was a noise that just didn't stop. Then I went to close the window because I wanted to take a shower when I saw a little fawn trapped between the fences of our neighbor's and our garden! It was the little fawn crying for his mother all the time. I rushed downstairs, brought my girl to my MIL and ran outside (still in my PJ's). It had already freed himself but was now inside our neighbor's garden, completly confused and not knowing how to find a way out. Then it started running towards the street!!! I didn't know if our neighbor had closed her gate, so I desperately ran around the house, onto the street and into the neighbor's lot. Luckily she had closed the gate! Now it was standing there, a really tiny fawn, crying for his mother over the fence:

It already panicked when it saw me, so I called the neighbor (a lady of about 83 years) to tell her not to come out. What to do now? The only way out of the lot was this gate which led to the heavily trafficked street. I have no idea how it got in, maybe through a little gap in the fence, but there was no chance of getting it back through there again. I tried to call a forester, but no one answered the phone. So I called the police. Two really friendly officers arrived after a while. They never had such a situation before! But the only way to help the fawn was to catch it and get it back over the fence. It was heartbreaking to see that tiny panicked creature fleeing and throwing itself against the fence! I was scared that it would hurt itself. Here it desperately ran towards the gate after the police officer had first tried to get it:

But then it all worked well! It tried to hide behind the compost heap and the officer was able to capture it and lift it over the fence where the mother was waiting. Whew! It was so nice to see that the officers were touched by this little fawn, too! They were very relieved and happy that everything went well!

Ok. LOOOONG post. But I wanted to share this with you. Thank you for reading! And thank you for visiting. And thank you for voting if you like my card!!!

Hugs,

Vanessa

Supplies:

Paper: Bazzil Basics

Stamp: Hero Arts

Ink: Tsukineko

Dies: Sizzix, PTI

Small Pearls: Prima Marketing

Other: Japanese Tissue Paper, Wax Pearls