Inspiration Challenge #14: HomeGoods flyer

This week's inspiration challenge is one of those times when nothing showed up at the last minute and grabbed my attention, so I went to a flyer I'd received in the mail several weeks ago. It's from HomeGoods and I just loved the image on the cover. Upload keyword for today is DSIC14, and if you're playing along with Gimme Some Lovin' it's DSGSL.

For my card I don't think I interpreted the piece as literally as I often do. My inspiration came from the colors, the script font, the scrollwork on the banister, and the baroque-looking motif on the left edge. This card also is for the SCS sketch challenge today - it's a toughie! - and for my Gimme Some Lovin' challenge day 3.

The color combo here is very vanilla, chocolate chip, and certainly celery - some of my favorites. I loved this combo from the moment I saw the Tie the Knot scrap kit that uses these colors. Once I chose those, I decided to go with a large panel of celery designer paper for the main background. I'm not sure I've ever used this particular print - maybe because it's the reverse side of the little dot print, which I always seem to run out of first! But I think for this card, it's perfect.

I wanted the smaller panels to have some different visual textures, so I sort of created my own designer paper. The largest panel uses the En Francais background in its debut on my cards. It's gorgeous and I have no idea why I hadn't pulled it out yet. I stamped it in chocolate chip and then took the large swirl from Baroque Motifs and stamped on top of the background in both chocolate chip and celery.

The next panel was done with celery ink on my Baroque Border wheel, which I also have never used on a card till today. I added the chocolate chip taffeta ribbon to this panel before mounting. I'm always a happy girl when I get to use this ribbon!

The long and skinny panel is done with the small stamp from Baroque Motifs, in second- and third-generation stamping. I wanted it to be lighter so that it would allow the sentiment and the other panels to shine through. I like how this looks - when I saw the sketch I first had the idea to use a long and skinny image stamp, but I decided to challenge myself not to do that and see what else I could come up with.

The sentiment comes from Many Happy Returns and is oval-punched. To put the card together I layered everything on chocolate chip cardstock and also inked the edges with chocolate chip. The first three panels are mounted flat, then I put dimensionals on the top and bottom of the skinny panel and also mounted the oval sentiment on dimensionals. I love this one. I guess you could say that elegant cards are really the mainstay of my cardmaking style - but the rest of the stamps I've picked for Gimme Some Lovin' week are not elegant ones so you'll see something different the next few days. I always have a harder time fitting stamping into my day the latter part of the week, so I hope I can keep up with my challenge!