Inspiration Is for Squares

Or maybe circles. You be the judge.

First of all, THIS CARD  by Franka Thorenz totally caught my eye on Pinterest. It's both adorable and elegant. *happy sigh*

So I my first effort was a fairly literal version of the inspiration piece.

The vine turned out a bit different than expected. I'd inked the stamp (Papertrey's Turning a New Leaf) with Arteza watercolor brush pens, brushing the light green all over and then tapping on the darker shades. My spritz didn't really have enough water to blend the colors very well, but I sort of liked the mottled effect and continued to build the card around it.

By the way, I had to retrieve a bunch of large circle punches from cold storage to make these cards because my order from Hero Arts with the infinity circle dies hasn't arrived yet. Kudos to Hero Arts for staying open as they can right now. My gratitude enables my patience in waiting for the order. At least they are trying, which is all any of us can do under these trying circumstances!

And at least I have circle punches to work in the meantime. Who says having a hoard is a bad thing? Not I!

Anyway, I liked the results of my first effort but kept going.

The second effort felt a bit more like LateBlossom to me. In my search for stamps for a second version, I found this wreath from Simon Says. It gently begged to be used, and I'm so glad I did...even if it took me pretty far from the inspiration piece.

I colored with three different shades of green Copics, randomly scattering the colors around the wreath for a bit of dimensional effect. Then, using a Sakura stardust pen, I added some shimmer to the dots.

Finally, the last square inspiration (or is it circle inspiration? Does it matter?). This one is my favorite. The inspiration piece is much more evident here, although the architecture of it is greatly simplified with masking rather than cutting the top circle. I added a thin mat...cut using a Creative Memories Circle Cutter because the punches gave too much border (see card #2).

This set, also from Simon Says, is one of my favorites. The leaves were deliberately stamped a bit askew to add some whimsy. Since I didn't have cardstock to match the Hero Arts soft apricot ink for the punched leaf, I stamped a shadow stamp onto white cardstock and then punched it to create a perfectly matching visual triangle of the apricot, unifying the top third and bottom two thirds of the card.

Many thanks to Franka Thorenz and her beautiful inspiration card. I couldn't have made these three cards without it!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan