Evening lovelies, happy – freezing cold & snowy – Friday.  I’ve tried to finish this post every evening since Monday & each time I was distracted.  Btw, how is it Friday already?

After last week’s disastrous canvas effort, I’ve gone back to my card making roots.  Much safer, methinks.  A friend, very kindly & unexpectedly,  gave me some money for Christmas & her only condition was that I had to buy myself something from Chocolate Baroque.  After much perusal of the website I chose these gorgeous goodies……….

These mini clear Christmas stamps will be perfect for next Christmas & I loved the Steampunk Butterfly unmounted stamp set the moment I saw them.  And I wanted the damask stencil for quite a while.

I wanted to make a thank you card for my friend, so I used the wonderful Hels’ stencil masterclass feature in the February issue of Craft Magazine for my inspiration.

I used Faded Jeans & Shaded Lilac distress inks on the background & texture paste with gold embossing powder.

I cut the bookplate from grungepaper with the Tim Holtz tag die & painted it with PaperArtsy’s Chocolate Pudding, French Roast & Little Black Dress Fresco Finish paints, adding a little Spanish Topaz treasure gold on top.

Here’s the finished card, I’m happy to say the recipient liked it.  Have I mentioned that I LOVE copper embossing powder?  That’s it on the corner flourish above the butterfly.  I found it in my stash before Christmas & have been using it on almost every project since.

Thanks for visiting my blog & a special thanks to Leandra, Michelle & everyone who left such constructive comments on my canvases last week.  I’m still trying to work out what to do with them.

I might be back tomorrow night, if I can come up with something half decent for this week’s PaperArtsy challenge.  The hugely talented Helen Chilton has been using Portfolio pastels & Fresco Finish paints on her guest designer projects this week.  They’re gorgeous.

Until then, love & light.