Inspiration Challenge #20: Island Bar Print

I know I'm a day early - tomorrow is the big fair so I was going to do my card and schedule my post for tonight. Then I actually started the card last night, and now I'm waiting (along with everyone else) for the color challenge to be posted to SCS, so I figured I'd go ahead and finish it. So you get one extra day to play!

I was browsing art.com for an inspiration piece for this week, and this Island Bar print was what I gravitated to. It must have been its resemblance to the In Colors and the gorgeous flowers. I looked around a little longer, thinking I should choose something in a different style, but then I thought, well, this is what I like, so this is what we'll do! If you play along, please leave a comment here, and if you upload to SCS, this week's keyword is DSIC20.

Here is the card I made. It's a multipurpose card - yesterday Julee Tillman posted her Mojo Monday sketch challenge, and since it's the first Monday of the month, it's a contest to win free Verve Visual stamps. I've never played her sketch on a contest week - ooh, the pressure! I decided instead of knocking out the card as fast as possible, which is what I've mostly been doing lately, I would slow down and really think about what elements I wanted my card to have. When I'm getting ready for a fair or other event, I forget just how much fun it is to take my time with cardmaking.

The colors I chose are soft sky for the background and stamped flowers, always artichoke for the leaves and layers, and groovy guava for the flowers, sentiment and card base. For the background I chose two different prints from the soft sky pack - I was looking for the softest prints and thought these were perfect. And it so happened that they are two sides of the same sheet, which made the cutting very simple. I cut a panel 5" x 3.75", then cut it the long way at 1.25" (1/3 of the width) and then cut each of those at the 2" mark. All I had to do then was just flip two of the pieces so the patterns are on opposing panels. Before adhering them to an artichoke panel, I edged each piece with artichoke ink.

The small flower stamp is from Garden Silhouettes. I colored the flowers with a blender pen and groovy guava reinker and the stems and leaves with artichoke marker. I stamped repeatedly to make an allover print, then cut to size. The sentiment is from Wordsworth and is stamped in artichoke. After stamping I cut it to the same size as the floral panel, taped them together on the back, inked the outside edges of my new "panel" and added piercing in each corner. This was adhered to another artichoke panel and then I added the taffeta ribbon, which I think is by May Arts.

The large flower from Delight in Life was stamped onto soft sky cardstock in both groovy guava and always artichoke. I colored the flower with my guava reinker and blender pen, then colored three of the artichoke petals to make leaves. I thought this flower deserved a little special treatment, so I added just a touch of Sakura stardust glitter pen to the petals and leaves. I cut it out and mounted it on dimensionals.

Before putting it all together, I added a final touch of piercing around the outside edge of the soft sky background panels. I was a little nervous that it was going to be overkill, but I think it worked to tie everything together. Now that I've made this card, I'm realizing how much I'm looking forward to the fair being over and being able to go back to making any kind of card I want - after today I don't plan to make another Mother's Day card for a very long time!