Another familiar face

The featured stamper today on SCS is Petal Pusher - I didn't know her by name, but when I looked at her gallery I instantly knew her work! She is Mary of the wonderful blog Stampin' Pretty. And is she ever!

The card I chose out of Mary's gallery is this one. I confess, on Sundays I don't always get a lot of stamping time so I often gravitate toward cards that are on the simpler side. This one grabbed my eye right away because first, I loved it, and second, I thought it would be perfect to showcase the rub-ons from Sale-a-Bration. (Not too much time left to get these into your hands, now!) I really had a hard time getting a good photo of this card, for some reason - I finally had to just go with this one, which was the best of the lot.

First I cut my central vanilla panel to the 5.5" width, and then cut out the chocolate chip flower rub-on that I wanted to use. With the popsicle stick that came with the rub-ons, I adhered it to the paper. Then I added three olive rub-ons for accents.

Those solid images can take a fair bit of pressure, but I came up with this Tip of the Day: If you angle the stick so it's almost horizontal to the paper and press down with your finger, the rub-on adheres with a lot less work. I had always been holding the stick more like a pencil and "coloring" over the image, but when I tried it this way, it was a breeze!

I kept a lot of things from Mary's card, but here are the changes. I used a smaller dot background (the Polka Dot background stamp), which is done in chocolate chip on matching cardstock. I eliminated the river rock but added an extra panel of chocolate behind the main image. I did my piercing on the olive panel since there really wasn't room above the rub-ons. I went with an olive scallop circle and used a stamp from Think Happy Thoughts in chocolate chip with the olive flower in the center. The sentiment is punched with the 1 1/4" punch and then layered over a 1 3/8" chocolate circle. Finally, I went back to my Theatre ribbon originals for this lovely olive ribbon. (Ahem, couldn't find the narrow olive grosgrain that I know is here somewhere. Must finish that organization project soon!) It was a bit of a trick since the ribbon reverses to river rock and I didn't want that to be too obvious, but I think it works.

Now go look at Mary's fabulous work and blog, and CASE her yourself!