FREEDOM

Dear Reader

This card is for The Sugar Bowl Challenge No 40 - Do It Yourself. The use of a Sugar Nellie stamp was needed but you could pick any of the previous sketches on the blog to use for the card. I chose no 33 (I think!) which was a fairly straightforward sketch that I'd missed. I like The Sugar Bowl Challenge as I love all the Sugar Nellie stamps and am always keeping my fingers xd that I win! I used up some papers I've had a while - MME, along with tonal bazzill and ribbon from RWS. I coloured the image which is Leanne Ellis's Annie with Tim Holtz distress inks and added a tiny tag on the birdcage. I used a couple of fabric butterflies as embellishments.

I loved the idea with this stamp of letting the bird go free. I think the stamp is called "Fly Away". Abroad last year in Croatia I was wandering through the back streets of Dubrovnik when I came across a host of birdcages, home to all manner of exotic coloured birds. They were beautiful but I always think there's something sad about caged animals and birds and I was itching to open their doors. For goodness sake birds were meant to fly! For some reason I took a picture of this orange bird, perhaps to take my mind off letting them all out and risking arrest lol - and the Dubrovnik birds came to mind again when I started making this card and I rooted around and found the picture. The irony is that as much as I dislike birds in cages I love bird cages themselves - I've got four in my house (ornate ones not blue plastic like the one in the photo in case you're wondering). None of them have birds in although one has one sitting on top of the cage! Makes no sense. Anyway, in my card the little bird is just plain brown and she's being set free. Perhaps I'm thinking that sometimes in life it's best not to be too showy!!