Digital Two For Tuesday 9

Here are the two new images for this week's challenge. I gave these images to this week's guest designer and asked her to step out of her comfort zone and she delivered two beautiful cards.

This week our guest designer is Sharon. I have been following her blog Shardon Exclusives for awhile and besides being a talented paper artist she makes the most beautiful hand beaded jewelry. I encourage all of you to take a look. Here is her bio. "Hi, my name is Sharon A. Kyser. I am happily married to a very sweet man (only 6 years ago). He totally supports my creative spirit. He even made a bedroom into an art room for me to develop whatever project I come up with next.
As a very small child, I remember making velvet paper roses for Mother's Day. Since then I have been into numerous mediums. I have sewed, contract dresses (at $1.50 labor per dress!) & clothing right out of high school. One of the last things that I sewed was my daughters wedding dress. Then I re-made her dress into a wedding dress for my parents 50th wedding anniversary. (I haven't sewn since!!!)
I won a prize at the Iowa State Fair for china painting. Then later was a runner up for first place in Tole Painting. I bought yards & yards of cross stitching products and have even worked in woods. ( All the while, I have always worked with paper products.)
May 2008, I started beading to be able to use some of the Antique & Vintage necklaces that my Mother had so passionately collected. The first lesson that I took, I cried out of frustration! I kept going back for more lessons and now I am totally hooked! I enjoy the process of the textures, the pattern designs, the colors, the sizes of the beads but most of all I love hearing all of the kind words when someone purchases a piece. I can not imagine what I did before beading except for working with paper. ( I have a huge stash of paper!) Sometimes it actually hurts when I have to use a favorite/beautiful piece of paper. But I like seeing a product once I am through adding all of my fru-fru. As long as I can possibly see, I will be working to create something new, something made by ME, as I have nothing else to leave this world! It pleases me to know that someone "cherishes" things that I made.

"I am so used to working with people/flower graphics so this assignment was quite a stretch for me. I am a very Victorian/Vintage-y designer and like a lot of fru-fru. The era that these pictures came from have very sleek lines & not at all fussy. But I took up the challenge, yet found myself lost in the frufru world again. I am never a black and white sort of designer. One always needs a little color in their life. But I just "went for it" and came up with the lady, (compliments of http://clearlyvintage.blogspot.com/) overlooking the Renault. The "reach high" wording was from http://digifree.blogspot.com/ files. I then put a band of rose colored circles across the bottom to ground the car. I went into photoshop and colored a few of the flowers over her head & the front of the car with a gradient brush to match the rose below. I added two of layers of ribbon of two textures then tied it with a bow. (See, I told you I couldn't get away from fru-fru.) The "thank you" is raised with a piece of matting scrap.
I am always looking for good ideas And I came across Jak Heath's work at http://crafterskitchen.blogspot.com/ . I have seen this style done in numerous places but I love the card she designed and thought I would use the general idea on my second card. I had some bright orange ribbon (too bright) so then I used my "Distress Ink" pad (by Ranger) and stamped until it brought down the tone to match the flower. Kinda' puckered the ribbon onto two way tape. I added a row of flower petals and topped it with one of my Momma's vintage buttons.