Extreme Make Over

This week's CAS challenge is to take a card you've made before and make it over CAS style. I did make over a couple of my cards, but taking my CAS style and making it CAS-er is sort of hard. By freaky coincidence, I spent a lot of time last weekend making over sumptuously embellished cards from two magazines. Then, this morning, I checked Joan B's blog Paperlicious, and she has posted a fabulously simple make over.

Make overs are totally in the air, and for once I feel like I have my finger on the pulse of trends in the stamping world. I don't expect this giddy feeling to last, but I'm enjoying it while it does.

The first card make over I'm going to share comes from Card Creations Volume 7 and was made by the totally amazing Sherry Wright, whose name pops up in the credits for beautiful cards in practically every magazine I open. Her We Are Thankful card is a beautiful design that I just had to CAS-ify. Notice how perfect it is...she even has a faint text background on the distressed piece under the ribbon to echo the text on the focal point circle. Brilliant!

To CAS-ify a card, I do the following:
1. Eliminate layers.
2. Eliminate embellishments.
3. Eliminate patterns.
4. Simplify colors.
5. Simplify textures.
Basically, I strip everything but the key elements necessary to communicate the message in an interesting way. Sounds simple, right? NOT! But it IS fun.

I love the wreath around Sherry's text circle and realized that my new leaf punch would do the trick without time-consuming fussy cutting. I also love how the glittery branch directs the eye to the sentiment, and thought about using the branch from PTI's Beautiful Blooms (I LOVE that set!) in place of Sherry's glittery branch, but eventually chickened out. When you only have a focal point and a sentiment on a card, does the viewer's eye need to be directed? I'm not sure, but I do know my make over card is totally me. It's minimalist, it's cream-on-cream, it's crisp. But it could never have happened without the inspiration of Sherry's lovely card.



If you want more detailed instructions, read on. First, I stamped the text style background from PTI on a scrap of vintage cream cardstock in chocolate chip, and then punched out that circle (making sure I included the word gratitude in the text) and a slightly larger matte of really rust. I punched six leaf branches from really rust and attached them to the back of the matte using a glue pen. It took a bit of fiddling to get them lined up right, but it was worth the effort. Next, I cut a square card from vintage cream (I think it's 5.5 inches, but it may be 5...can't remember) and used a craft knife to slit the fold where I wanted the ribbon to go through. I tied the ribbon using the one-hole knot technique, hoping the knot would be smaller...it's still huge. Oh well. I stamped the sentiment twice using a stamp positioner to get the two colors (you could use markers, though). Then, I attached the medallion with a glue dot to the knot.

Supplies
stamps: PTI Text Style, Hero Arts Autumn
cardstock: PTI vintage cream, SU really rust
ink: SU really rust, chocolate chip
accessories: ribbon, leaf punch, circle punches, glue dots, stamp positioner