52CC - week 20, show and tell

The 52CC prompt for week 20 is 'Show and Tell' - use a new purchase!

There is a very sad tale attached to these cards, though it does have an ultimately happy ending ...... I was embossing the flower stamp when my trusty heat gun stopped working.  It's been a faithful friend from when I first started stamping 21 years ago, so I have been wondering when it would finally go to Stamping Heaven.  DH checked the fuse and pronounced the patient dead.  Now, since I had been in mid-emboss ..... I had to get another gun in a hurry!  The Glitter Pot is one of the closest places I could go, so I checked their website and they had a two speed heat gun, in stock and on sale!  A quick phone call to ask them to put it to one side for me and off I went.
Ahem.  Going all that way and not looking around would have been silly .... wouldn't it?  A fair few items fell into the basket and by the time I left, that heat gun had cost me £90 !!!!!  I got back home and the partially embossed image was completed without a hitch, somewhat to my surprise as I had thought it would dry up whilst I was gone for three hours.....

So, back to the cards!  The birthday card is a tri-fold lined card blank, with a panel cut off and trimmed to fit the front with a gold mat.  I used the Woodware south-west corner punch for a tiny bit of detail.  The flower stamp is from Penny Black and is the required new purchase for the prompt, coloured with Kuretake pens, fussy cut and edged with gold ink.  The sentiment is from Hobby Art.

The Christmas card features one of my new Glitter Pot purchases!  The Memory Box landscape die, it's a favourite with the 52 card girlies and I have been thinking about buying it for some time..... it was obviously Fate that the GP had it in stock and who am I to argue with Fate?  LOL.  The snowflake paper is an old one from Craft Creations and the sentiment banner was bought at Ally Pally, years ago.  I added some ribbons and pearls at the base.  The frame is a silver peel-off line and I have no idea why it has appeared to be partially red in the photo ... the light must have caught it strangely :-)