Inspired by Beth Opel

Remember Wednesday is OLW day on Jennifer's Blog!

Yet another card maker inspired me through Card Creations magazine. This time, it's Beth Opel's fabulously colorful and clean get well card that uses three strips of designer paper and three brads. How cool is this?!?!?!

I sifted through my much-neglected designer paper and didn't find anything comparable to Beth's strips. But I DID find this funky polygon paper in a soft pink and browns, which meant a different color scheme...softer and girly but still a bit graphic. My stash of stamps also didn't have a comparable sentiment, so a little simple repetition gives a similar effect. I used brown half-pearls in place of brads.

My ribbon stash had some fun, bright colors, so I wondered what would happen if I used a landscape-oriented card and ran ribbons all the way across. [Note: the ribbon is attached with Scor-Tape and trimmed flush to the sides of the card.] Moving the sentiment up and to the right still balances the rhinestones across the wider space. Another way of unifying this design was to stamp the sentiment in the same color as the bottom ribbon. Black would have looked out of place here.

Finally, I remembered my Papertrey polka dot paper and paired it with this fun sentiment from Hero Arts. No need for brads or rhinestones, which would have been too much. Oh how I love the flatness of this card...yet the colors really make it fun and interesting!

I really hope these inspiration posts are helping those of you who are intimidated by adapting other cardmaker's designs feel better about the whole process. If you loosen up and play around, it's really not that hard to use someone else's cool idea as a jumping off point for your own variations. Too many times, beginners or stampers who think they aren't creative feel they have to copy cards exactly. In fact, varying ideas with what you already have on hand is lots of fun!!!