Brushstrokes For A Friend

Today I drew inspiration from one of the wonderful Mood Boards from Catherine Pooler's online class, In The Mood. I can't show you the board here but you can sign up for the class and get some wonderful inspiration for yourself!

I can tell you that the board contains wonderful hues of pink and mint and that's what I decided to use in my card design.

Though I had hoped to use a Blender Pen to color some flowers for my project, I was having a problem with my watercolor paper "pilling" so I changed strategies.

Using my MISTI and the Brushstrokes background stamp, I colored the stripes using Mint Macaron and Pink Pirouette Stampin' Write Markers and then stamped on a Whisper White matte. I trimmed the matte a bit and then adhered it to a Pink Pirouette card base using Fuse Fast.

A 1" strip of vellum was stamped with Versamark using one of the borders from the Bordering Blooms stamp set. I heat embossed it using White Stampin' Emboss Powder and then flagged one end using the Triple Banner Punch.

On the embossed side, I used Mint Macaron, Strawberry Slush, and Blackberry Bliss Stampin' Write Markers to color in the border.

On a 1 1/2" strip of Mint Macaron card stock I stamped the sentiment from the Sprinkles of Life stamp set using Rose Red. I flagged one end using the Triple Banner Punch.

I then adhered the vellum to the Mint Macaron strip using Multipurpose Liquid Glue, being careful to hide the adhesive by applying it behind the colored embossing.

Using a sponge, a brushed a thin strip of Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer paper with Strawberry Slush and then used Crystal Effects to adhere it to the bottom of the Mint Macaron banner.

Part of a Tea Doily was adhered to the card front and then the banner was adhered on top of it using Fuse Fast.

I used Blackberry Bliss with a sponge to color the three flowers from the now retired Vanilla Flower Trim. Crystal Effects adhered it to the banner.

Five pearls were the final embellishment to complete the card.

Have you played with the Brushstrokes stamp yet? Let me know what you have created in the comments below!

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Here's Hoping It's Subtle

A new card today, based on a color scheme that germinated while I was working at Walmart the other day.

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I have a big crush on Blackberry Bliss. Well, this time I decided to use just a few hints of Blackberry Bliss so this card is my attempt at subtlety!

The structure of the card comes from the Card Challenge #163 over at Freshly Made Sketches.

I decided to rotate the sketch 90 degrees to make it a vertical orientation.

I cut a 5 x 7" card base from Soft Suede and then stamped the Dictionary stamp onto a piece of Sahara Sand using Sahara Sand ink. I used my distressing tool to rough up the edges.

I used a sponge dauber to ink the edges with both Sahara Sand and Soft Suede ink. I then adhered it to a Blackberry Bliss matte so that only a thin matte edge was seen.

I needed a paper for the bottom section of the card but none of the papers I had looked quite right so I made my own using the same technique as the card in my blog post, Creative Gathering. This time I used Soft Suede and Blackberry Bliss ink on Sahara Sand card stock.

It was just what I needed! The paper was adhered to the bottom portion of the card front. The matted piece was adhered over top of it, sandwiching some Linen Thread between it and the card base, to add a little visual interest and texture to the top of the card.

I then used the Bordering Blooms stamp set to stamp a border in Soft Suede on a strip of Sahara Sand. I inked the edges with Blackberry Bliss and adhered it across the bottom of the card front.

I used a flower punch from the now retired, Itty Bitty Shapes Punch Pack, to punch several flowers from Blackberry Bliss. These I glued in an alternating pattern across the strip. I added tiny pearls to the centres of the flowers.

I stamped a sentiment from the Bloom With Hope stamp set on the top part of the stamped matte, using Blackberry Bliss. To draw more attention to the sentiment, I added another flower to complete the card.

In retrospect, I wish I had done a couple of things differently.

First, I would not have put so many flowers on the strip itself and I would have tried to place them more randomly rather than them being so symmetrical.

Secondly, I think the Soft Suede card front needs some sort of subtle stamped texture. It just looks a little too smooth to me.

So, what do you think? Did my card turn out to be a little bit more subtle this time? Do you agree with my suggestions for improvement of the card? Let me know in the Comments below!


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