Hip to be square

What, more square cards? from moi?? Beate had a square card for her weekend sketch challenge (click here) and I decided to stick with the square for the two cards I made. She loves square cards, and maybe I'll become a convert yet!

The first thing I thought of when I looked at the sketch was using a wheel on the left-hand panel. Of course wheels are part of one of the current SU promotions so I thought I should showcase one of them. Never mind that I didn't use it with the stamps that SU bundled it with - the It's Beautiful wheel lives up to its name all on its own! Seriously, I could rhapsodize for a while on this gorgeous wheel. But it's late so I'll just move along...

I inked up the wheel using my purely pomegranate ink pad, then rolled it onto blush blossom cardstock. How pretty do these two colors look together? I layered a strip of it with pomegranate cardstock and attached to a 5 1/4" square blush blossom card. I kept the background completely plain - that's unusual for me to have so much "empty" space, but now you can see the pretty images in all their glory!

The sentiment from All Holidays is stamped in chocolate chip on blush blossom and layered with chocolate chip. To dress it up I stamped the three flowers from One of a Kind and punched out, then attached to the sentiment panel with glue dots. I added just a bit of the chocolate chip wide grosgrain ribbon to the wheeled panel, then attached to the card and mounted the sentiment up on dimensionals. This was very quick to do but I think it makes quite a statement.

Now, I hadn't really intended to make a second card with the sketch. But I had gotten out the From the Garden stamp this morning, intending to use it sometime this weekend, and it just called out to me. In order to use the flower, which is just ginormous, I made the bottom panel larger for this card. If you haven't seen this stamp, my card shows just a small portion of the whole image, and it's incredible. It's only available through hostess benefits but it's a must-have.

I first stamped the flower in river rock on whisper white cardstock and cut it down until it seemed small enough to fit on the card. I edged in basic black with the ink pad, then cut river rock and black panels for layers, edged the river rock, and mounted together.

The side panel is whisper white on basic black. The swirl stamp is from Stitched Exotics, and I liked how it picked up the swirls in the background paper. These are second-generation stamps in river rock, since I didn't want it to be overpowering. The sentiment is from Short and Sweet and is stamped in black, and the black brads are from the vintage brad pack.

The background paper panel is a 5" square of river rock designer paper. I edged it in black again, added the narrow black grosgrain ribbon, and then centered it on a 5.5" square white card. I thought the stamped layers looked cool overlapping the bottom layer in different ways; both are mounted on dimensionals.

One final note on this card: since it says "Best wishes" it must not be a Mother's Day card, right? LOL. I intended it to be a wedding card. Is it wedding-y enough? Should I seal the deal and stamp a wedding congrats sentiment on the inside? I haven't done it yet, so tell me what you think!