Oh yeah, I remember challenges

How long has it been since I did a challenge? About a week and a half... it feels like forever! And I probably wouldn't have done one today if it weren't for needing a Father's Day card for Todd. I combined it with the inspiration challenge on SCS, which was to use the Acacia catalog. What a wealth of inspiration there - I'm sure you'll be seeing something from there in a future IC here on my blog. For today I chose the Botanical Wall Art that Stephanie posted. The layout is Jen's Sketch for You to Try - with a slight alteration that I moved the circle on her sketch up.

I should start by saying that getting an accurate photo of this card at this time of night was impossible. Sorry! The colors I picked based on the art were chocolate chip, sage shadow, really rust, and more mustard (actually this is a Bazzill paper that matches because I couldn't find my SU mustard cardstock - I really, really need to clean my stamping space...). The first thing I did was score a 1" diagonal grid on a piece of sage cardstock - Beate gives great instructions here. I turned it over and sponged the raised lines with chocolate chip ink, with a little extra on the edges. It's layered onto rust cardstock.

I knew I wanted to do some copper embossing - I just love copper anything. I made the background by stamping the large swirl from Stitched Exotics in Versamark on chocolate chip cardstock and then embossing with copper EP. I mounted it on a mustard card.

Once the background was embossed, I decided all the rest of the stamping had to be as well or it would just pale in comparison! The mustard panel combines the large swirl and leaf from Stitched Exotics, and the rust panel uses just the leaf. The sentiment is from All-Year Cheer and was punched with Marvy punches. I did a little embossing resist on all of these, sponging the chocolate chip ink over and then rubbing off any that got on the embossed areas.

Three Making Memories copper brads, a couple chocolate chip layers, and pop-up glue dots for the sentiment, and that was that. The planning for this one took a lot more time than the execution! I hope I get to do more stamping in the coming week... I didn't complete my Christmas card challenge for this week, even. But I guess I had a few other things going on. We are all just too stressed out around here so cross your fingers that everything calms down soon!