Soho Subway Designer Paper, oh yeah!

I ordered the Soho Subway Designer Series Paper during the pre-order period that Demonstrators are given prior to a new catalogue becoming "live".  We only have a short list of products from which we can choose and, of the three Designer Papers offered, one of the two I chose was Soho Subway.  I really love the colours in the paper.  Early Espresso has always been one of my go-to colours as has Very Vanilla.  Island Indigo is such a deep and rich colour while Summer Starfruit, a colour I barely tolerated when it first came out, has become another go-to colour during this past year.  The new 2013-15 In-Color, Crisp Cantaloupe, worked well with each of the other colours.  The one fear I had was that the large letters or numbers on a few of the sheets of the Designer Paper might be overwhelming when used in a card.

Today I took the plunge and decided to use a piece of the Designer Paper that had "NEW YORK" written boldly across it and that featured all of the five colours.  No, there isn't any Island Indigo in the actual piece that spells out "NEW YORK", but the two skyscrapers beside it are actually the reverse side of the sheet and the graph squares (or windows, as I chose to designate them to be) are actually drawn in Island Indigo.

There is a lot going on in the card, some of which you only notice after you've looked at it more closely.  The layer I've put directly onto the base cardstock of Crisp Cantaloupe, is made up of a piece of Summer Starfruit and Early Espresso adhered together.  I took two strips of the graphed side of the Designer Paper, each a different width and length, and adhered them to that layer, beginning right at the join-line.  Then I put that pieced-together layer through the Big Shot using my Square Lattice embossing folder.  The embossing made it appear as if it was one layer of cardstock.  

Before I adhered that layer to the base cardstock, I tore the top right hand corner away, making sure I didn't damage my skyscrapers.  Once I had adhered the layer to the base cardstock, I carefully tore the corner off the base to compliment the torn corner of the layer.  Then I adhered the piece of Designer Paper with the "NEW YORK" parallel to the skyscrapers, but extending into the Early Espresso section of the layer.  At this point the card was looking very stark.  I knew I had to add some different textures and shapes to break up the sharp angles.

I took a piece of the 7/8" Cotton Ribbon and frayed about 3/4" on each end.  Then I used my Stampin' Spritzer which contained a mix of Rubbing Alcohol and Summer Starfruit re-inker to spray both sides of the ribbon, making sure that the frayed ends also got well-spritzed with the solution.  While that was drying, I took two of the medium sized Simply Pressed Clay buttons and pushed each one into my Early Espresso ink pad, making sure that I got some ink onto the sides as well.  The result was a sort of "ringed" effect since the deeper grooves of the button remained the white of the clay.  That didn't last long since I immediately took them and spritzed them with the same Summer Starfruit solution with which I had spritzed the ribbon.

While the embellishments were drying, I took a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock and prepared to stamp my sentiment.  I had decided to use the "make a wish come true" sentiment from the Make a Wish stamp set.  I thought it was appropriate since I would love to go to New York and so would my daughter.  First I inked the stamp up with my new Crisp Cantaloupe ink pad.  Then I used my Blender Pen to remove the ink from "make a" and "come true" and also from the "I" in "WISH".  Having de-inked those portions of the stamp, I proceeded to ink them up using my Stampin' Markers.  I used the Early Espresso marker for the "make a" and the "come true" and then used my Summer Starfruit for the "I" in "WISH".  Didn't the ink begin to dry on my stamp?  Yes, it did.  No worries, however, since a simple series of "huffs" (as if you're steaming up your window in the winter) added enough moisture to reactivate my ink.  You can see from the image that all the colours stamped equally well.

Yes, my sentiment does look a bit grubby, doesn't it?  Well, it just looked too sterile compared to the rest of the card so I took one of my small acrylic blocks and, without a stamp or anything else on it, tapped it onto my Baked Brown Sugar ink pad, stamped it off onto my working paper, and then "stamped" it onto the sentiment.  The ink had separated into droplets and I love the final effect.  I had used a sponge to "age" the edges of the base cardstock as well as the torn corner and now I dampened the sponge slightly and sponged the edges of the sentiment.  It gives a totally different look than a dry sponge does but, done sparingly, is very effective.

I adhered the ribbon using some Snail adhesive and then adhered the sentiment using Stampin' Dimensionals. To finish it off I used glue dots to adhere the buttons and then "filled" the centres of the buttons with the Large Rhinestone Basic Jewels, using tiny pieces of the Stampin' Dimensionals.

There you have it.  The large letters worked perfectly as did the graph side of the Designer Paper.  I enjoyed the challenge and really love the resulting card.