Kings and Queens

"Kings and Queens" is the theme at Simon Says Stamp and Show this week. You'd think it would be an easy theme for an Englishwoman, but it's taken me all week to come up with this card and I'm just sneaking it in before the deadline expires!

"England! My country, great and free!

Heart of the world, I leap to thee!"

       Philip James Bailey

This is one of my "frame cards", where the aperture is covered in acetate and filled with objects, then lifted from the background with foam tape. The background for the aperture was created with distress inks and Crafty Individuals stamps, together with some real stamps and charms.

"Crown"

The phrenology head and crown are both images from the Graphics Fairy. The crown is printed in black and white and coloured with red promarkers, gold gel pen, versamark & perfect pearls for more gold, heat embossing with blue glass powder for the blue gems, and finally decorated with liquid pearls "white opal" to make dimensional pearls.

"Charming!"

Lee (aka Craftyloops) got me addicted to charms last year when she sent me some in a parcel (thanks Lee!), and I've been collecting them ever since. I love this little "Alice in Wonderland" rabbit and just had to include him here, together with a crown and teapot (it's true, Englishwomen really are addicted to tea, well I am anyway!).

The stamps? Well, I've been collecting them since I was a little girl. It was a boy's hobby where I grew up and I was the only girl philatelist in the area. Sadly, my eyes are no longer good enough to continue collecting (you really need to be able to see watermarks and tiny differences in the stamps), but I still like to look at them from time to time, and I have found a new use for some of them lately :-)

Entered for the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp and Show... King and Queens!