Bird on Windowsill

House of Cards - Photo Inspiration + Any Style
I chose to go with the "Classic & Elegant" style for this card.
In the past I've struggled making cards for photo inspiration challenges. But I do love a challenge, and why should it be any different than getting inspiration from sketches and CASEs, right? I think my main trouble is to make up my mind and decide what to pull inspiration from! But with this week's photo over at House of Cards, I didn't have any trouble at all - I loved the colors, the design of the wallpaper, the flowers and the curtains. I also got a lot of help from other inspirational sources:
Kaboodle Doodles - Ink or Paint
For the background I covered a piece of kraft paper with white gesso. Once dry I used a brick wall embossing folder and slightly inked the bricks with Tea Dye DI.
Craft Room Challenge - Heat Embossing, Songbird - #25 Favorite Things and Sentimental Sundays - #165 Anything with Wings
I love heat embossing! I wanted to take up the metallic details of the wallpaper on the photo and chose to use my Platinum UTEE. I like how it can cover large spaces and give the elements a metallic feel. I also have grown quite fond of my Sizzix rounded tag dies, and this time I've used them to make a window.
I wanted to add a bird to the windowsill. I chose to stamp it with black ink on a piece of scrap and added clear embossing powder to it. I like the glossy finish it gives, so I used a pine colored ink to stamp the leaves  and gave it the same treatment with clear embossing powder. I hadn't planned to add a sentiment on the front, but I do like these ticket sentiments of kraft.
Totally Papercrafts - #177 Use Lace
I wasn't quite sure what to do with the empty space behind the window, so I picked up inspiration from the photo as well as the Totally Papercrafts challenge theme  and decided to add curtains of lace.
And finally I'd like to enter this card into Make it Monday - Anything Goes.
I love this blog as it is where I got my first followers and so many encouraging comments when I first started card making and blogging. The ladies over at MIM encourage people to leave some love visiting others blogs, and they even pick the winner of the prize amongst those who've left comments. I really like the ideology of their blog.
I also added three flowers. The two orange ones were white, but they 've been sprayed with Tattered Angels Peach Glimmer Mist.
And that makes 7 challenge blogs in total, and 6 inspirational sources for my card.