).
One last card featuring products from this months promo... the background for this card was something I made for a Kristina colour inspiration challenge and then changed my mind and it's been floating around the room ever since. I came across it the other day, and decided to incorporate it into a catalogue CASEing challenge from a demo Yahoo group I am on (excuse me for being lazy and not finding a link for you, I'm beat from staying up too late last night and shopping with my girls all day today). For those who haven't come across the term before, CASE stands for "Copy And Steal Everything", though in most cases (no pun intended) there are a good deal of changes made in the copying. Anyway, this hasn't really come out how I intended, but it's a bright and cheery card which is quite fitting for our weather lately.
Last night was a cyberstamp on the Inklings forum, and I was hosting! This card is for the first challenge, to use the colours Perfect Plum, Tempting Turquoise, Brocade Blue, Basic Black and Very Vanilla. I took these colours from the Hepburn bedding range from Linen House. It proved to be a challenging combination, the Tempting Turquoise seeming to throw everyone off. I'm planning on tackling this challenge again because I think I do them more justice... I think because this card is also an attempt at replicating the photo I have it in the back of my head that things are shimmery enough. To get the Turquoise leaves on the Plum layer I stamped with the Whisper White craft ink and sponged Turquoise pastel over top, aka the chalkboard technique. I think my white pad needs reinking and hence the stamping didn't come out as crisp as it should but I can live with it. To get the ribbon to wrap around only part of the card I cut a slit through the layers under the central piece to pass the ribbon through. As well as the Carte Postale set I used the Linen background to stamp over the Very Vanilla layer using VersaMark. The layout for the card was based on Jen's recent SFYTT.
What's so Danish about this card, you ask? It was inspired by the top Claire Danes wore on Rove last week (as seen in the first pic in this slideshow). I decided the paisley background had the look I was after (Fine Lace was a completely different lace...), then had to think how I was going to stamp it... Basic Black wasn't going to be black enough and I didn't relish the thought of StazOn all over my precious paisley. So in the end I opted to stamp in VersaMark and dab the black pastel over it with a sponge dauber. The sentiment (from Sincere Salutations) was stamped in StazOn on caramel, with some gold brads to finish it off. Pretty simple, but quite elegant I think.
The hearts were created using a Heidi Swapp mask set that I won at Scrapbooking Divas a while back. As soon as I saw them I had this basic idea... it just took me an awfully long time to put it into action! I started by stamping the Stampin' Up! Floral background on Very Vanilla cardstock using VersaMark. I then put the masks over this and dusted pastels on them using daubers. Over the top of this I stamped "MUM" using the EK/Image Tree Loopy uppercase alphabet using VersaFine Imperial Purple ink. These stamps were actually the driving force behind the card. In talking to my Mum about my first published projects she asked about the butterfly I had used that was from this alpha set (well, the upper or lower, can't remember now). My Mum stamps too and was after another alpha set in a size between what she had, so I decided the best way to show her the size of them was to use them on a card for her! Unfortunately, this was pretty much the state the card sat in for a week because I just couldn't decide on what to do to finish it off. I scanned what I had and emailed it to my sister and mentioned the few ideas I had and she replied "even a strip of lace along the bottom would be too much". And once again I went to bed without the card progressing any further: every idea seemed to throw the card off balance. When I woke up the next morning it suddenly hit me: yes, a strip of lace would be too much, but a little bow of it in the corner would be perfect. Thus, finally, what looks like a simple card was finished days (and many canned ideas) later!
