The Fabulous Mad Madam M

I have been wanting to get my hands on this Stitchy Bear stamp ever since I first saw it in the banner at OSAAT.  This is my daughter.  Well it isn't actually my daughter, she's 12 and a touch more three dimensional than this picture lol  but this is my daughter's fashion sense!  Well I suppose I am probably to blame for that as I have never been known for my eye for fashion either, but DD loves her clothes and sometimes likes to wear as many different colours as she can, all at the same time!  Well nobody could ever accuse her of being dull.  Unfortunately she didn't come supplied with sunglasses for everyone who looks at her.  Don't think by reading this I am being mean by the way, she is sitting next to me whilst I type wearing a purple t-shirt, a platypus coloured cardigan (her description - I think it refers to her TY Patti the Platypus, but I can see what she means) and a knitted cream hat, complete with cat ears... her Havana cat is currently chewing my socked foot (he has a fetish for socked feet) and she has just had to run into the kitchen to get him to follow her.  It worked!  We have lots of random moments in this family I can tell you!

At Crafty Cardmakers this week, our challenge is Love The Lasting Kind.  I don't think there can be any better display of love than the love a mother shows to her child.  From the first moment they are placed in your arms after you have given birth to them, nothing ever compares to that.  The overwhelming emotions of holding this tiny little bundle (and believe me, my DD was tiny!) and knowing that they have been growing inside you for 9 months and they are finally here, out in the real world, small and vulnerable and needy of everything to survive.  I think those in the midwifery profession call it bonding, I call it pure, all-consuming Love.

Things haven't always run smoothly for my daughter and I.  She was only 6 and a half years old when I finally decided enough was enough and turned my back on her father, and left her to live with him as it seemed to be the best for her at that time.  I still maintain that it was the best then as I needed time to sort my own head out but it hurt me, and more sadly it hurt her.  I think she felt I had rejected her too, but I made it up to her, slowly but surely and as she grew older, she realised that the parent she really wanted to live with was me, someone who would be there for her all the time and not just pass her around relatives because they couldn't prioritise family over work commitments.

Whoa!  I am getting really sentimental here!  I am supposed to be talking about the card! Hehehe!

The stamp is a digi stamp from Stitchy Bear Stamps and I have coloured her with promarkers and added depth and definition with black polychromos pencil.  I ran round the edge of the image with cool grey 1 and cut her out to make the image pop out more from the background.  The many background papers I have chosen to co-ordinate with the main image - mainly because I have used so many garish colours on it, I had a great job finding just one which would do it, so I decided to layer it.  The 'flowery' part is drawn freehand onto sticky backed canvas with Derwent Inktense pencils to match the leggings on the main image, then edged with bright pink then torn to reveal orange.  The orange is torn to reveal hot pink leopard skin print - this is in homage to a similarly coloured pair of leggings that DD wore to death, until they finally didn't fit her.  I created this paper with an Anne Geddes stamp.  The lime green, final part of the topper is embossed with a stars embossing plate in my Sizzix.  I then backed the whole lot onto black paper and added the 'Fabulous' sentiment which is an embossed stamp from the same Anne Geddes stamp set, I have used orange, red and black then coloured the background with Inktense pencils and trimmed to size.