Walk like an Egyptian!

Now I've got everyone over the age of 30 (at least in the UK) humming that song, I'll let you sing away while I tell you that this week's challenge, no 85,  at Less is More is a theme, and the theme is Oval. The task is to incorporate an oval somewhere into the design.

We tend to associate Egyptian images with pyramids, so I thought I'd be my usual awkward self and use an oval instead. I stamped my trusty old King Tut stamp on a black oval and embossed it in gold, with a hieroglyph border stamps acrosss the middle of the background card. Here's the finished result. There is a very narrow gold border around the oval that really hasn't come out well in the photo, which is a pity as it ties the whole card together.

As I have done in the past, I am also going to share "the one that got away". This time it isn't really a failure, just one that has come out a little bit TOO clean and simple and is hovering on the boder of boring. I'm going to set it aside to incorporate the image into a future card, because I don't think there's enough substance to it to work as a stand-alone card.

I  cut an oval from scrap card and used the waste as a stencil, sponging sea and sunset colours in to create the background, then overstamped it with the palm tree silhouette. I'd love some suggestions on how I can turn it from a rather bland image-on-a-card to something more exciting - maybe attach some tiny seashells? Or scrunch it all up and start again?