Inspiration Takes an Unusual Direction, Part 3 and a Word about Thick Embellishments

As I've said for the past two days, seeing some peat pot cards in Take Ten made me want to play with textures, but another part of the appeal of the inspiration cards was their use of different, unusual collage-type elements (buttons, twine, snaps, dymo label, etc.) in a very simple way. On my first card, I used the wooden heart and twine, on yesterday's card I tried to use buttons and papyrus with a bird punch.  Here's a much more successful attempt using the StampinUp bird punch.

This design is much more unified than yesterday's, which felt like too much stuff and somewhat disjointed. The musical acrylic piece (a RAK from Audrey...thank you!) relates to the bird in color and theme, the pearls are a tiny bit egg-like, and string belongs on a bird's nest.

The marbled paper is from a scrap left over from previous projects. The swirly soft-pink colors have a hint of gold shimmer (like the gold ink of the music on the acrylic piece) which is absolutely lovely in real life and complements the shimmer and color of the pearls as well. 

For those of you who, like me, rarely use big thick embellishments on cards, it really can be fun to play around with them on occasion. To duplicate the idea without the bulk, however, would be fairly easy if you have either musical patterned paper or a music stamp. Punch a circle of the music and use either a) a thin acrylic sticker over it (i.e., Page Pebbles) or b) Crystal Effects. That way, you could easily mail it in a standard envelope.

Or you can just say the heck with it and use a ridiculously thick embellishment. Whatever works for you.

Bee Happy

In my previous life as an academic intellectual, I despised puns. Now, however, I'm starting to like them. Or at least not despise them. And sometimes, I can actually use one without feeling like grading the card in red ink with a big, fat F.

Such is the case today with these adorable bees from Hero Arts. LOVE them! (By the way, in my previous life as an academic intellectual, I never used all caps or exclamation points, either. My goodness, how the snob has fallen!)

I made this card from bits and pieces I found in my tin of bits and pieces...punched and/or stamped pieces that have been sitting in a tin for months (or years) just waiting to be used. I'd made about five or six of the heart circles with the gemstones long ago, and, at another time, had stamped, colored, and punched the bees. When I dumped the tin out last week, bees fell next to the heart circles and INSPIRATION!!!!!

(More all caps and exclamation points. Have I no shame? No, not really. This blog isn't, after all, the Publication of the Modern Language Association or the Journal of Medieval Studies. How many of you would be here if it were one of those revered and respected scholarly journals? Yeah, I thought so. Typographical shouting and punctuational enthusiasm add charm to my current life as a stamp-obsessed, stay-at-home-mommy blogger. Go, me!)

Tomorrow, I'm posting about photographing cards, which seems really strange because I don't feel my photos are anywhere close to the quality of, say, Julie Ebersole's or Joan B's. But for those of you who are novice photographers with limited equipment and next to no photo editing skills, well, I'm here for you. Or will be tomorrow.

Don't forget about OLW25! There are some amazing cards already posted to Jennifer's challenge, and I'm hoping to play sometime today. I have the perfect stamp!!!

There I go again. Let's hear it for egregious punctuation!

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts, Papertrey Ink (sentiment from Honey Bees)
ink: Palette Noir, SU markers in amethyst and celery
paper: PTI white, SU amethyst
accessories: heart and circle punches, rhinestone, dimensionals, scallop scissors to round the corners a bit

Quick Scrap Challenge Card

This quick card uses a scrap of real red cardstock I'd already scalloped but never used. I cut it down for the matte of this simple stamped panel using a cherry stamp and sentiment from Hero Arts. I put Crystal Laquer on the cherries, but it doesn't show up well in the photo. Also, the red of the cherries is a better match for the matte IRL...not sure why they look so light.

Hope you're having a great weekend! We had a surprise rescue mission today when George found an injured owl on his bike ride. More about that on my blog Questioning my Intelligence coming up on Wednesday...including photos!

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts
cardstock: PTI white, SU real red
ink: Palette Noir
accessories: Bic Mark-It markers, dimensionals, threading water punch, crystal laquer

Extreme Make Over #2

Here's the inspiration for my second Extreme CAS Make Over. (Please ignore the copyright...I'm too ditzy to turn off the automatic copyright in Picasa. I shot this photo of part of page 32 in Papercrafts Holiday Cards and More.)


This wonderfully rustic, country card was made by Alli Miles, whose wonderful work has inspired me numerous times before. The design of her card here seemed so balanced and perfect, I just had to make it over to be more CAS.

In this case, my main job was eliminating pattern because the design itself isn't overly embellished or complicated to start with. I did removed a few layers and made essentially an OLC, but removing the cute sentiment flag meant the button also had to go away (trust me, it looked dumb on my remake). To preserve the balance of Alli's card, I replaced the bow with a big brad and three small brads on the third tree. The gingham ribbon is a nod to Alli's original country feel, which is lost with just plain cardstock.

The trees I cut were a bit big for a standard card and looked squished, as did the sentiment. When I tried to cut the trees smaller, they got all crooked and skinny. So I started again and adjusted my card size to fit the triangles. (I seriously want a triangle punch.) The card is a 5.5-inch square, and now everything has room to breathe.



If I remake this card, I'll add a ribbon piece under the big brad to make a faux bow...the brad alone seems a bit plain to me. I might also add faux stitching to the trees to get more of the country feel that's so integral to Alli's card. Other than those two tweaks, though, I'd leave it as is: clean, simple, and sweet.

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts sentiment
ink: real red
paper: PTI white, SU olive, artichoke, and cocoa
accessories: brads, dimensionals, ribbon.

Scrap Challenge Card #1

Lately, I've been making cards that generate scraps rather than use them. The result is this:



My Cropper Hopper accordion folder is perfect for organizing scraps. Unfortunately, it barely closes at the moment because it is full and fat, even though I'm not a hoarder of small scraps. Hence, I have put my scrap container on a diet and am challenging myself to whittle its bulk down to something that at least closes easily. I'll spotlight the best of the cards here periodically for the next few months.

Here are my Scrap Challenge rules:

1. Card bases must be already-cut bases (which I store in a sterilite drawer on my desk and largely forget about; as a result, I have about 40 of them).
2. Card must use a main image matted with an existing scrap. I may even get really crazy and double-matte a few. Then again, maybe I can't handle that many layers....
3. Card must use at least one embellishment since I've been using so few embellishments lately.
4. Card must showcase a stamp or technique I haven't used in a while, just to shake things up a bit.

Today's card uses the totally cute Sweet Moments clear set from Hero Arts, and it is colored with Bic Mark-It markers, except for the vanilla ice cream, which I colored with SU's barely banana marker. I haven't used Crystal Laquer in years, but it's been popping up on lots of cards lately so I used it for the cherry.




I can't remember using this color combination, but I am totally in love. It's just so fresh and yet a little retro at the same time.

Feel free to join me in my Scrap Challenge if you feel like it, and feel free to change the rules as you see fit for your own craft space's dietary needs. I'd love it if you would link your card in the comments here so I could see it!

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts
paper: PTI white; SU real red, cool caribbean
ink: Palette Dark Chocolate
accessories: Bic Mark-It markers, rick-rack, dimensionals