CASification of a Card by Michelle Woerner

CASification (if you're new to Simplicity) is my made-up word for "taking a gorgeous layered and embellished card, and simplifying it." Sometimes, when I encounter a particularly well-designed card, I just have to make it my own, and that's how I felt when I saw Michelle Woerner's card on page 12 of Take Ten's summer issue.

*swoon*

I totally love her design: balanced, fresh, and just begging me to make one myself.

Michelle (who's known as sf9erfan on SCS) doesn't have the exact card posted online, but she did make a whole set of similar cards and put them on her blog HERE. The card in Take Ten is almost identical to the first card on her post.

Here's my version:

As you can see, to simplify the design, I replaced Michelle's strips of patterned paper with a stamp (Text Style, Papertrey). It gives a ground to the circles, even though I'm not using ribbon or patterned paper at all. Instead of using patterned paper for my circles, I stamped two Hero Arts backgrounds in red and blue and punched them out. Then, I stamped the sentiment (Limitless Labels, Papertrey), added a Maya Road velvet flower with brad in place of Michelle's pretty yet bulky Prima flowers. Plus, I needed a spot of red near the flower since I hadn't used the ribbon...gotta complete that visual triangle of red! The red brad is a bit lumpy, but the whole thing is mailable with regular postage.

Michelle's version has an elegance the simplified version can't match (the rose and twine and ribbon and DP really are perfect on her card!). But her overall design...using three different circles and a red-white-blue color scheme and a background to anchor it all...is such an inspiration.

Thanks, Michelle!