Welcome to the Sugar & Spice 4th Challenge

It's time for the Sugar and Spice Crafty Challenge again!  The theme this time around is April Showers Brings May Flowers.  I decided to make a card for a shower I will be attending in May and the bride's theme is shabby chic with lots of pink.  I had a real challenge coming up with the layout on this one.  I really wanted to use my MFT umbrella die, but just couldn't bring it together.  In the end, I let the paper work for me.  My paper is from Paper House and called Beaches - it's a 6x6 mini pad. The paper behind the umbrella reminds me of raindrops on a stain-glassed window and I used the stripes to show rays of sunlight.  Hence April/May Showers are always followed by sunlight and pretty flowers.

I cut the solid umbrella in a yellow scrap from my stash and also the pink pieces layered on top. I chose to pop up the center of the umbrella and used 2-way tape on just the corner edges and top of umbrella giving it a 3D effect. I also added very thin ribbon on the edges of the background of the paper the umbrella is on.

The sentiment is also from the same die and stamp set.  I chose to stamp the sentiment with StazOn and back the banners with black card stock to make it pop even more. 

I stamped hearts verses rain drops and used stickles to sparkle them up. I applied a scalloped border cut from the same scraps of pink as the sentiment.  The die is from Sizzix long border die called Dots & Scallops. I layered all on the light blue background then applied it to the white card stock base.  In the end I was very pleased with the result. One hard lesson I really learned  is don't try and take photos out side on a windy day, it blew away and landed in my rock garden and damaged the one corner.  I fixed it the best I could and it will be usable.  I can smile about it now.

Once again thank you all for taking the time to entry Sugar and Spice Challenges.  We are very honoured to have Butterfly Reflections Ink sponsor our next challenge and I would like to thank her very much.