Inlaid die cuts - my first attempt

If you've been wondering why it's been so quiet on here, I've been away in France for a few days, visiting family and having lots of fun with my two younger grandchildren. And my local friends may not wish to know this, but the weather was gloriously hot and sunny and I even turned a little bit brown.

One of our outings was to a lovely restaurant, and everyone saw my face light up when I was handed the menu. Not because of all the delicious goodies listed inside (well, not immediately anyway) but because the cover design was so simple and elegant - I had to CASE it as soon as I got home. The original was in shades of grey and white, but I thought it would be a perfect card for this week's Less is More colour challenge of "The colours in your kitchen". Our kitchen is in terracotta, dark grey and cream, so I raided my snippets box for suitable scraps of card to reflect those colours.

As soon as Mark saw the card, he recognised the inspiration - although as he pointed out, the menu we had said "Carte" where my card says "With love". But who wants to send a card that says "card" on the front?

I decided to inlay the dies where they crossed the grey band, to keep the flattish look of a menu cover. Never having tried this before, I found it very fiddly. Perhaps my choice of dies for a first attempt wasn't the most appropriate!

Because all the coloured card is from my snippets box, I am also popping over to the Snippets Playground with this card, where I know there are many more experienced die-cut-inlayers than I am. But we all have to start somewhere!