A Green Christmas

Sometimes, a mistake yields something good.

I love it when that happens!

I stamped the sentiment with the intention of putting a glittery punched star above it. But I stamped too low, and when I positioned the star, it just wasn't balanced. So I added the nativity scene and went monochromatic...and it works perfectly!

Of course, the stamps are from the Hero Arts' set Greatest Gift and therefore made to work together. But you know what I mean.

I liked this one so much I made five of them.

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Greatest Gift
ink: VersaColor
paper: PTI white
accesories: a tiny little rhinestone

Update and this Week's OLW Location

Well, the past few days have gotten away from me for a number of reasons, thankfully not associated with the storm.

We've been very fortunate here in southwest Ohio...just rain and wind, but nothing terribly extreme. My heart goes out to all those who have lost power and sustained property damage, but most especially to those who have been injured or lost loved ones in the super storm. I hope my regular readers on the east coast can let us know how they are doing.

I hope to have some time in my craft room tomorrow and resume posting here either tomorrow or Thursday.

In the meantime, you'll find this week's OLW challenge on Ardyth's blog! Check it out Wednesday morning!

A Touch of Glitter

Y'all know how much I love tiny focal points in lots of white space. Well, here you go.

Here's some more of the Michael's glitter paper, this time in red and green. I was surprised at how easily my tiny holly punch went through the heavy glitter paper. And isn't that flourished sentiment from Hero Arts just so elegant and pretty? The layout is a great way to spotlight a big, beautiful sentiment, a tiny yet high-impact image, and a random scrap of card stock.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend, and just want to tell all my readers in the path of the Frankenstorm my prayers are with you.

Blessings and safety to all.

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts
ink: SU real red
paper: PTI white, glitter paper in red and green
accessories: small holly punch, 1/8" circle punch, dimensionals, glue pen

Symbolism

One design element that people sometimes forget is Unity. To make a card unified, each component has to relate to the others in deliberate ways, which, let's face it, can be hard when you're working with the "limited" supplies of even an expert-level stamp hoarder.

How many sentiments do you have?

"Roughly a gazillion."

Do you always have just the right one?

"No."

I thought not.

Anyway, unity is why using happy colors on a sympathy card is a bad idea, as is putting a rusted-out, old-timer jalopy that's falling apart in an overgrown field on a birthday card. Well, unless you intend to liken the birthday boy to a rusted-out, old-timer jalopy that's falling apart in an overgrown field.

(BTW, what was StampinUp thinking with that set anyway?)

So when I contemplated the empty birdcage stamp in SU's Nature Walk, I thought about how sad bird cages are. When they are occupied, they are prisons for things that should fly free. When they are empty, they imply absence, something missing...something missing that's pretty and sings better than I do.

Oh the moral conundrum of birdcages!

I decided to make a missing you card for Operation Write Home, only all the missing you stamps I had were too small, too large, on two lines instead of one, or ugly fonts. So it became a thinking of you card, which works, but not quite as well.

The birdcage looks a bit too feminine for a dude card, so I went girly with the whole thing: pink and burgundy. Wouldn't this be a great card for a female soldier, sailor, marine, or airman to send to her mother or sister or aunt or besty?

I just love the spray of flowers peeking out from behind the stamped panel. It adds some lovely interest and shows how the empty cage might symbolize loss or absence, but the flowers symbolize hope and beauty.

It also nicely creates some asymmetrical balance on the card. Bonus point!

And really, don't you wish all our troops safe return to their own homes? I was listening to this song today. It's really not the sort of thing you should listen to while driving. But it so perfectly expresses the commitment and sacrifice of our troops and their families.

And that's all I have to say about that. *sniff, sniff*

Supplies
stamps: SU Nature Walk, PTI sentiment (not sure which set)
ink: Versacolor
paper: PTI
accessories: dimensionals, scallop scissors (to slightly round the corners of the raised panel)

Nature Walk

Making clean-and-simple cards with graphic-style stamps (think of Papertrey's Modern Basics, for example) is relatively easy. Getting clean-and-simple cards from sets like StampinUp's Nature Walk or Lovely as a Tree is a lot more challenging. The artistic, natural style of the stamps lends itself more readily to shabby chic, collage, and vintage...basically, layered and embellished styles.

But there are some very simple ways of allowing these natural images to take center stage in CAS designs, and I just love playing around with them.

Many, many thanks to Reader Bev, who sent me SU's set Nature Walk. I sat down and played with it first chance I had, and here are the first two cards I made.

The crisp layout of mosaic rectangles inside a tidy rectangle arranged on a rectangular card lends itself to CAS. The trick to making these mosaic layouts work is even spaces between the pieces, and tweezers can help so much with placing the pieces.

By the way, I really loved the look of rounded corners of the blue card and wanted to do the same on the green card, but after I stamped the sentiment, I realized that rounding the bottom right corner would cramp the sentiment. The miss you sentiment was chosen because the troops need lots of cards with it, and this card is destined for Operation Write Home. As there is nothing soft about missing loved ones, the sharp, pointy corners feel appropriate to the situation, don't you think?

For tips and tricks on making these rectangular mosaics, you can see my tutorial HERE.


Supplies
stamps: SU Nature Walk, Papertrey Simple Little Things (sentiment on green card)
ink: Versacolor
paper: PTI white, light blue; SU certainly celery
accessories: dimensionals, corner rounder, tweezers

Sparkle

This is my second post today. Please scroll down to see the first post, and don't forget the OLW on Karen's Blog on Wednesday!

HELLO!

GLITTER!

SPARKLE!

IT'S SO SHINY!!!!

The two smaller punches are from Martha's line, the large is a Marvy. I think.

The glitter paper is from Michael's, and it's thick. Really thick, as in "I broke a punch on this paper, but thanks to Ellen Hutson, I replaced the punch."

That's thick. I have this paper in silver, gold, dark blue, light blue, red, and green. You can expect to see lots of it in the next couple of months because, you know,

IT'S SO SPARKLY!!!!!!


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Sue asked why I choose to use VersaColor ink sometimes, as I did on THIS CARD. Basically, I fell into a rut of using only my Memento inks for a long time, but when I got the new inks and had issues with them, I decided that I sorta kinda oughta use the scores of other ink pads in my hoard. Since then, I've used Brilliance, VersaColor, Memories, and other inks whenever the urge strikes.

I did a review of inks on my Favorite Products page, so you can read all the details there. I dislike mixing thick inks and dye inks (they just look so different) but often pick one or the other because of color selection. I have LOTS of those little VersaColor cubes, which means a pretty great variety of colors. They are never blotchy like the Memento inks, but if you don't ink the stamp up evenly, you will get some gradations of color, giving a shaded look that sometimes works out well, sometimes not.

One other comment about inks. If you stamp mainly on white card stock, you are free to use any inks you want, without worrying about matching card stock. Simplicity has its advantages here. I love how easy it is to stamp when I don't have to worry about matchy-matchy. 'Cause you know, with my OCD, matchy-matchy can be a bit of a burden.

Just a bit.

OLW110 Squares

I wanted to make another card for OLW110 that used more than one square. A little three-square stamp from an old, old SU set called to me but proved much harder to use than I'd thought. This was my fifth or sixth effort, and I declared it good enough for government work and moved on.

Sometimes, it's the challenges that seem the most straightforward that stump me the most. I suspect my penchant for over-thinking is to blame. Darn that frontal lobe! But I do love the colors here: Versacolor fresh green and lagoon blue.

Yum.

Now it's almost time for OLW111, which you will find on Karen's blog tomorrow (Wednesday).

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Ink (Turning a New Leaf, Botanical Silhouettes), SU (three squares)
ink: Versacolor lagoon blue, fresh green
paper: PTI white
accessories: none