Taking a break from Valentine's

I love Valentine's and all the great cards you can make for the occasion: funny cards, sweet cards, downright mushy cards and everything in between.  But sometimes you need a break and today I decided to do anything but Valentine's Day cards.  Looking at all the stamp sets that I've bought and haven't gotten around to using, I realized that today would be the day I would use at least two of the sets...if not more.  The first one I chose was "Heaven Sent".  A perfect title under the circumstances.

I decided to make a tri-fold 4" x 4" card by taking a 4" x 12" piece of Very Vanilla textured cardstock and scoring it at 4" and then again at 8".  Then I chose one of the cheeriest of the Sale-a-bration DS papers and cut a 3 3/4" x 3 3/4" piece, centering it onto the front of the card.  I used the third from the smallest framelits Labels Collection die to cut a window in the centre of the front of the card.  I set the cut out label aside to use later.

Then I cut a piece of Pool Party cardstock to match the blue in the SAB paper and used the Snail glue to attack it to the back of the front of the card.  Using the second from the smallest of the framelits Labels Collection die and lining it up from the front, I cut a window in the cardstock, effectively making a double-framed window in the front.

Using Very Vanilla cardstock, I stamped the little boy collecting Easter eggs with Early Espresso ink and then cut the image out with the same die I used for the window in the Pool Party cardstock.  I coloured the image using Watercolour Pencils and a Blending Pen.  The colours match the SAB paper perfectly, which I love!  I used Pool Party ink and a sponge to shade around the label and then used Snail glue to centre it onto the next page through the front of the card.  It worked perfectly and the boy is as visible from the front of the card as he is on the next page.  Under that label, I glued a "Happy Easter" sentiment which  was stamped on Very Vanilla cardstock with Pool Party ink and cut with the Word Label Punch and then shaded the edges with the same ink.

You can just see the three pages of the card in this picture.  On the last page I used the set aside Label from the front of the card which showed off the SAB paper.  I glued that onto the page and then stamped the long sentiment from the set onto Very Vanilla cardstock and cut it out with the Modern Label Punch, shaded the edges with Pool Party ink to match the sentiment, and glued  that down onto the SAB label.

It's cheery, it's colourful, and best of all...it's not a Valentine. :)

Out of My Comfort Range

Doesn't everyone have favourite colours?  I know I sure do.  And even though I have a lot of wonderful Stampin Up colours, I find that some are getting close to running out and some of my packages are barely beyond being opened.

Rich Razzleberry is one of those colours.  I liked it well enough to order a package when I was initially bringing in all my supplies but then I discovered that it's not a colour I gravitate towards.  So I decided to challenge myself.  The challenge was to find at least three colours or Designer papers that I never seemed to touch and design a card.  I came up with the Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive, and the Well Worn DSP.  That was the easy part: finding the paper.  So I began playing around with the paper.  I cut the Rich Razzleberry into the standard 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" card size and began scoring diagonal lines on what would be the front of the card.  I scored a lot of lines!

When I looked through the Well Worn DSP and found some paper that had Basic Black and Old Olive in a vintage print on dirty white, I knew that it would be the "key" to the design.  And I was right!

The Old Olive strip that I was using along the one side just appeared so plain but with the busy pattern of the DSP and the diagonal scoring on the Rich Razzleberry, I was reluctant to add any more embossing.  So I used the "spatter" in the French Foliage stamp set with Olive Green ink to dress up the cardstock.  The wonderful Labels Collection of framelits worked perfectly to cut the centre shapes.  Finally adding the dotted black scalloped ribbon (without the dots showing) and the Beautiful Wings cut from the elegant Brushed Silver cardstock finished up the card.

Sometimes it's worth challenging yourself!  Have you tried a colour-challenge lately?