Konnichiwa Midori!

When I spotted these cute Japanese girls over at Mamidoodles I just fell in love!

They are work of the talented Elisa and belong to her gorgeous and very affordable set of images called 'Midori', which means "Green" in Japanese.

Elisa has created this kit especially with us cardmaking girls in mind. You can get sweet little Midori in three different outfits, and she also comes as a template for paper piecing.

Elisa has just announced her new DT and has opened her first challenge over at Mamidoodles.

I couldn't resist playing along and really enjoyed using the yummy colour combo of 'wheat, pale blue and red' inspired by this picture.

This little tri-fold card is my entry for the Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge #79.

The theme for this week has been chosen by my super talented friend Vicky... so there was even more incentive than usual for me to play along!

Vicky's theme is 'A Day Out', and originally I was thinking about a day out in the country such as a picnic or a visit to a farm. However, after seeing cute Midori I knew that I wanted a little group of girls in their beautiful kimonos taking a day trip to see the cherry blossom or Sakura. I loved the book and film 'Memoirs of a Geisha' by Arthur Golden. The beautiful cherry blossom scenes made a big impact on me and inspired the idea for this card.

I used this beautiful traditional Haiku, translated by Robin Gill in 'Cherry blossom Epipthany', to set the scene:

cherry blossoms

with the morning moon

still in the sky

Japanese people believe the Japanese cherry blossom captures and defines all that is vulnerable about being human. They believe that the brief Sakura season gives a timely reminder, once a year, that life is fleeting and time is precious. For them the cherry blossom season is a time to take stock and evaluate what they have achieved, and what they are going to do next, on their life path. People travel from all over Japan to see the best displays of blossom.

I am also entering this card into the following challenges:

Digital Tuesday Challenge #55 - April flowers or April showers

Ginger Snap Creations Random Redhead Challenge - Growth (personal growth!) and

Raise the Bar - Movie Mania: Memoirs of a Geisha

The cherry blossom on this card was created using flower soft. The additional stamps that I used are a flower border clear stamp and the gorgeous 'Leaf Flourish' stamp, both from Hero Arts. The leafy border stamp is from Hobby arts and was stamped using Distress Inks.

Happy crafting everyone, and don't forget to drop by next week as I'll be celebrating my 1st Blogoversary with a few little candy giveaways!