Welcome to today's Guest Designer, Astrid !

Today we are welcoming Astrid of Astrid's Artistic Efforts, as the Guest Designer. Astrid was chosen by the DT as the winner of the Flights of Fancy challenge. Let's move on quickly and find out more about Astrid and also her beautiful project.

My name is Astrid and I have been paper crafting and stamping probably for about 10 years or so, but did not get seriously into it until about 2007.

Being a teacher by profession I received my first stamp, a box of embossing powers and embossing ink, as a Christmas present from a child in my class whose mum owned a rubber stamp shop. That was the beginning of a hobby that no doubt will last well into retirement!

My paper crafting hobby has developed from those early stamping and card making days into using many different media and I would like to call myself a mixed media artist. I love journaling, altering all sorts of objects and playing about with gesso, acrylic paints, collage and many layers. Often I use my stamps more for creating backgrounds rather than as a main vocal point. Having said that, on occasion I still return to my roots and I still love to make cards with stamping as the vocal point.

I would like to start with saying a huge big thank you for the invitation to do a guest design spot for Frilly and Funkie! It is a huge honour to be featured alongside such a talented team!

For my project I decided to make an accordion card using one of my favourite Tim Holtz dies, the Vintage Cabinet Card one. My chosen stamps came mostly from the Artistic Outpost Birds of a Feather set, as a final tribute to this wonderful stamp company that will soon be no more in its present form.

After long consideration my chosen word became “soar”, one of the words I chose as my words of power for 2014.

A detailed description of my project can be found on my blog http://astridsartisticefforts.blogspot.com

I'm sure you will agree that Astrid's project is stunning and has given loads more inspiration for the current challenge which is Words, Words, Words.

If you would like to join us as a Guest Designer all you need to do is join in with the current challenge !