Shabby Chic birthday card

It's my sister Val's birthday today (why not pop over to her blog to wish her Happy Birthday).  I decided to use my JustRite Shabby Chic stamp set which match my nesties Labels Four set. 

I used a piece of Kanban card to create an A5 card blank and then used my dies to make the front opening for the label.  To do this you need to place your die horizontally across the front inside of your card with the edge nestling up to the edge of the card.  Mark the halfway line of the die (vertically as this will be your fold line) and tape the die onto your card so it doesn't move.  Line up your cutting plates with your pencilled line - eg you will have half the die hanging over the end of the plates.  Put it through your cutting machine and then put it through again but this time the whole card and die to emboss it.  What happens is that the inside half of the die cuts but the outside just embosses so you can make the fold in your card with the actual shape protruding from the main card.  Possibly this is a better photo for you to see what I mean...........

I then stamped and gold embossed the three images, one main and two smaller for the right hand side of the card, and these were coloured using a mixture of Letraset Flexi and Promarkers before die cutting them and mounting onto mats.  As the front of the card is now actually the inside of the card it didn't have any embossing so I used a Clarity swirl stamp to add some gold embossing to match the rest of the card.  The small perfume bottle was stamped, embossed and coloured as above and then cut out and added to the front of the card using Pinflair Glue Gel.  The hatpins and flowers were from my stash as was the ribbon which was tied around the card and then I added super sticky tape down the length to allow me to "ruffle" some more ribbon over the top.

Here's another view of the card....................