spice up your life

just in case you're wondering about the title of this week's shopping our stash challenge, let me just tell you right off that it isn't food- or even color-related. nope. we'd like to see... (wait for it, because i'm preeeeeeeettttttty sure you won't guess this one, lol!) ...a card inspired by one of the spice girls!!! ok, yeah, i confess that the first time i read that, i did a double take and a miniony, "whaaaaaaaaa??!?!" but then i did a quick mental review of the spice girls: scary, sporty, baby, ginger and posh and realized there are A LOT of ways to go with this! plus, secretly, we on design teams like hosting the occasional challenge that is a bit hard to guess; that way we can see who only reads the titles on an aggregator site and links to 47 challenges without actually bothering to read the any of challenge blogs' pages. bwahahahahahaha! (ok, it might only be me who enjoys that, and i'm a bit sheepish to admit it, but there ya go.)

meanwhile, i decided to go with "posh" as my inspirational spice girl, and here's my card:

only just realizing that there isn't much in the way of papercrafting products here, unless we count the dreamweaver crackle embossing paste and liquitex gesso? other than that there is still stash, but it's vintage or upcycled: a page from a vintage horitcultural dictionary, with the aforesaid embossing paste thru stencils from tcw, wendi vecchi and penny black; a swatch of bamboo and one of sheer fabric; a pearl applique from M&J trimmings; vintage seambinding, leaf illustration and rose photo; thin chipboard substrate: paper accents; adhesives: xyron, sookwang tape, gluedots and lots and lots of machine stitching!

ok, yes, even for me, this has A LOT OF STUFF and it's all top-drawer! a friend of mine who designs custom window treatments recently shared a bunch of older/surplus swatches with me, so i now have an utterly luscious little hoard of luxury fabrics AND some neat wood and bamboo samples, like the one i've used here. since it's a bit heavier than the typical card fodder, i fused my vintage paper background to some lightweight chipboard, and used the sewing machine to attach the fussy-cut chiffon fabric and the pearl applique to the bamboo panel, and then again to secure the bamboo panel to the background. it was definitely a bit slow-going (i had to manually advance the machine to span all of those wider wooden slats) but i feel like everything is on there quite securely and there's definitely enough texture and interest... even for ME, lol!

plus i think you'll agree: it's pretty darned POSH, right?!

be sure to check out the rest of the spicy goodness from my design team darlings over at shopping our stash! ♥