Polka Doodles DT Cards

It's now time for the next challenge on Polka Doodles and this is my first week on the team.  I've been having a play with the gorgeous Back To Nature cd which has loads of papers and digital stamps, plus lots of elements to make shaped and 3D cards.
I've actually got 2 cards to show you as I didn't scroll down the page quite far enough to realise that it should be a New Year card. How silly am I! Here's the sketch to follow

The brief is to make a card with an envelope on it or that is an envelope and with a New Year theme. Here's my first one which isn't a New Year one!

When browsing the cd contents, I fell in love with the shake a tail feather collection which has loads of peacock themed papers, toppers, greetings and images in gorgeous shades of aqua, lilac and green. If the colours sound familiar, it's because I have chosen those very colours for my Christmas banners.
I chose various papers and a border from the collection and put them together with an image and some paper flowers. I really love a mix and match look.
Here's my second one which is for New Year:

For this one, I've used some of the cute little owls with their house. The house comes in various sizes and can be used to make a gorgeous 3D shaped card. I printed mine out and cut out aperture then adhered it over some Home Is Where The Heart Is and plaid papers. I made a little envelope from some stripy paper and added the greeting. I cut the owls out and used my favourite trick with an embossing ball tool to shape them. For anyone who hasn't seen this before, all you do is use a large ball tool, turn the item over on a soft mat and rub in a gentle circular fashion on the back. This gives a lovely rounded appearance to flowers, animals, birds and so on and makes them look 3D with very little effort.