Home --- a clean and simple challenge

Our weather is turning colder.  It's not so bad on sunny days but on days such as today, when it's overcast all day long, it feels colder and becomes depressing.  I know winter is just around the corner for this area of the world and I'm just not ready.  I went kicking and screaming from my comfortable flip-flops and sandals to my light sneakers but winter boots?  No, I'm not ready for that yet.

At least when I'm making cards, I can shut out the grey skies and work in my snug crafting room.  And so I turned to the challenges I have enjoyed and, yes, found a couple that appealed to me.  Thankfully they also compliment each other so that I can make the one card and enter both challenges.  Yay!

CASology has as its inspiration word, HOME.  That can be open to so many interpretations, which I find appealing.  Then I also found a great sketch at the Freshly Made Sketches challenge and knew the two would work nicely together.

 



I began with a base of Early Espresso cardstock.  I wanted to keep it very simple and so left it with the one layer and went on to stamping my image onto a smaller square of Whisper White.  I chose the little bird in its nest from the For the Birds stamp set.  Instead of using the sentiment that is attached to the image, I masked it and stamped only the image.  On a separate small piece of Whisper White I stamped my sentiment from the Holiday Home stamp set.

I used the Crumb Cake Blendabilities for the bird's nest along with the deepest shade from the Daffodil Delight Blendabilities.  For the bird, I used the lightest of the Night of Navy Blendabilities.  The beak was coloured with my Crisp Cantaloupe Stampin' Marker and the little heart was coloured with my Real Red Stampin' Marker.

I cut out the sentiment using my 1 3/8" circle punch and then cut a backing for it from Early Espresso using my 3rd to smallest circle Framelit.  I also cut a backing for the stamped Whisper White square leaving a very narrow border.

I mounted both the square and the circle onto the base card using Dimensionals and then, as a final touch, added a tiny heart just under the sentiment, cut from my Red Glimmer Paper.

For more cards using this sketch, please check out Freshly Made Sketches.

For more card with the theme of HOME, please check out CASology.