Welcome to today's Guest Designer, Nicola!

Today we are welcoming back Nicola (Paper Profusion) as our Guest Designer. Nicola was chosen by the DT as the winner of the 'Put a Ribbon on It' challenge. Let's move on to hear from Nicola!

Hi, I’m Nicola a.k.a. ‘Paper Profusion’, living in Dublin, Ireland. I'm thrilled to be Guest Designing for the über fabulous Frilly and Funkie challenge once again. I’ve loved handicrafts for as long as I can remember, probably inspired by my Mum who excelled at every single crafting technique out there. From very young I was an avid knitter and always enjoyed learning crafts especially ones involving paper. I’m now medically retired however during my ‘career / good health years’ my main creative hobby was photography especially travel/wildlife related. During a time of serious illness, I became hooked on paper crafting as it gave me an outlet to a home based hobby that I could dabble in, at my own pace. I’m particularly drawn to the vintage / shabby chic genres usually adding lots of embellishments and ribbon.

I was so pleased when Sue told me 'Stencil Mania!' was the theme to work with as I love using stencils to add texture and dimension. Only problem was choosing which ones to include on my card today that shows a little Springtime scene.

For the window 'pane' I applied texture paste through a Wendy Vecchi 'vintage quilt' stencil onto heat resistant acetate. Using the technique outlined by Tim Holtz in his March tag I magically turned the paste silver for a faux 'leaded window' effect. I then used Tim's gothic stencil for the pattern on the window blind by just blending distress ink through the stencil. I've also applied paste through Tim's latticework stencil and a Memory box 'tessatina' stencil to add extra background interest. Once dry, I lightly dabbed a variety of distress inks over the raised paste to add colour and then went and covered most of it up with window and fence diecuts!

Thank-you so much to all at Frilly & Funkie for allowing me feature today as Guest Designer. It’s always a privilege to be associated with this wonderful challenge and one of my very favourite design teams.

I'm sure you'll agree that Nicola's project is beautiful and has most definitely provided lots more inspiration for the current challenge 'Stencil Mania'.

If you would like to join us as Guest Designer too you'll have to join in with our challenge!