OLW52 Round and Round

This week's One-Layer Wednesday Challenge is to use a circle or multiple circles on your card. You can get really creative with this. For instance, the centers of some flowers are circles, brads are circles, pierced holes are circles. All those would count. Or you can make a round card, punch a round window into a card, or accent your card with bit of polka-dot ribbon. I'll bet y'all can think of LOTS more creative ways to incorporate circles into a ONE-LAYER card.

My sample for today is one of my favorite cards I've made lately, mainly because it's about as minimalist and clean as a stamper can get. One thing I've been reminded of this week as the Featured Stamper is how not everyone is clean and simple. Some people actually cannot NOT layer and embellish. I salute them and love looking at their art. But for me, this card is what I'm all about: white space, clear message, clean edges, pretty colors, not an embellishment or layer in sight.

*swoon*

This card uses the color challenge at SCS last week: baja breeze, bashful blue, certainly celery. And yes, there's a tiny triple circle on it...one of the flower centers for the cute flower in Papertrey Ink's Paper Tray set.


I did improvise a bit with the set. The all-caps YOU is actually from a stamp that says YOU'RE. The stand-alone you in the set is lower case. I wanted the whole sentiment to be in caps for balance, so I masked the 'RE with a small post-it note, inked the YOU, removed the post-it (don't forget to do this...like I have!), and then stamped.

I got the perfect alignment here with the gridded acrylic block and the help of a pencil-drawn line. First, I stamped the whole thing on scrap paper, and measured how wide it was. Then, I drew a pencil line on the card where I wanted the sentiment to be (slightly above the middle) and marked the width of the sentiment so it was exactly centered. Then, I stamped the THANK with the T lined up on the left-hand mark, stamped the YOU so the U was lined up with the right-hand mark, and then stamped the circle in the center between the two words.

Wow, that took a lot of words to explain.

Anyway, now it is your turn. To make this more fun, and to celebrate A WHOLE YEAR of One-Layer Wednesdays, I'll give a $20 gift certificate to one random participant in this week's challenge. The electronic gift card will be to the online stamping vendor of the winner's choice (US dollars, but open to all participants regardless of country of residence--hey, it'll help pay the shipping on a PTI order, LOL!).

Happy stampin'!

OLW52 Rules

1. A one-layer card is defined as a single layer of cardstock folded in half...no other layers allowed.

2. Use a circle or circles on your card. Get as creative as you like! And remember to keep embellishments to a minimum.

3. Post your card somewhere online and link back to it using the InLinkz button on the sidebar of Simplicity.

4. The most important rule of all: HAVE FUN!!!!