Sushi girl

Greetings from Tokyo!
Before you come up with massive envy, I better clarify that I'm home, far away from the Land of the rising sun. It was more a mental journey last night that ended up with this Far East inspired card.

I wanted to play with Asian motifs for quite a while, and the newest challenge at craft-alnica is more than perfect to set my fantasy free. I found this gorgeous little girl on pinterest (originally from kettodesign.com) and printed it on white cardboard. Isn't she lovely, with a plate of delicious sushi in one hand and a bright red umbrella in the other?

Even though the layout of the card is pretty simple (sketch from cheerfulsketches), it took me almost as long as if I had started some stitching project.
First, to find the perfect turquoise/blue background paper that would match the image. Then, decide whether I'd use red shades to match the umbrella or soft pink ones for the beautiful Japanese cherry trees. In the end, I've chosen non of these. Instead, I went with yellow cardrboard which is a bit of a contrast and represents the rising sun.
The idea of cherry trees however stuck with me and I used it in 3 ways: next to a punched brown stripe that would be the tree itself, tiny white sticker-blossoms I found in my stash, and white background paper with a white floral motif.

In the end, I aded tiny pearls on the umbrella to make the central image pop out a bit more.

p.s. Mental journey or real one, after a crafting session that lasted almost til 8 am, I have a jetlag that really makes me feel like I've just landed in Narita.
p.p.s. No worries, it wasn't this card that kept me up all night. In fact I've finished two more, which I'll present after I complete them with a couple of rhinestones.

challenges:
-craft-alnica: Oriental
- cheerfulsketches: sketch
- clear it out: yellow
- crafting from the heart: ATG
- crafty cardmakers: wings
- craftysentiments: ATG
- everybody art challenge: pearls
- fan-tastic tuesday: pearls
- fabnfunky: masculine
- fussynfancy: spring flowers
- handmade challenge: spring
- inspiration destination: ATG
- live and love:  signs of spring
- ooh la la:  lots of layers
- modsquad: colour wheel (yellow, red, turquoise)