Medals and Monarchs

Our Birthday Challenge and Blog Hop at Stampalot were a great success, and thanks to all those who took part so enthusiastically. But now it's May, and time for a new Stampalot Challenge. This month we're thinking about both the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics, so we want you to come up with projects on the theme of

Medals and Monarchs

This will give you many options: you can go very patriotic, or use lots of 'diamonds' on your work or take the opportunity to celebrate your own country's involvement in the Olympics using your traditional colours.

I had no stamps in my stash which would suit the theme and I didn't want to spend money on something I would use only once, so I was delighted to find that the May issue of Crafts Beautiful magazine had a free gift of a collage stamp and papers which would fit the bill perfectly. This is what I did with them.

I decided to make a rocker card, which I covered with the papers. The main image at the top is the stamp. The bunting was made by cutting out the pennants from one of the papers, ditto the Queen's head.

The "E2R" banner is a Waltzing Mouse stamp cut out by hand, with a crown from one of the free papers, and peel-offs for the lettering.

The Olympic topper is a Nestie shape, and the rings were made from Craftwork Cards' Candi, with holes punched out of the middle, then coloured with Promarkers. A few suitably coloured pearls and jewels provided the finishing touches to the card.

I didn't start with a clear idea of how the end product would look. I kind of made it all up as I went along, and it turned out gloriously over the top, but I quite like it! I think this is going to be a popular theme, and there's plenty of inspiration from my lovely teamies on the Challenge Blog, so do go on over and check it out. Oh, and there's a rather special prize too!

I'm looking forward to seeing all your creations in celebration of this year's great events.