Catching up

Whew, I am happy to be home and back to stamping! I had a wonderful trip to Chicago, though. It was great to hang out with friends and laugh and cry and eat great food and get a little time away for myself!

I missed a whole bunch of great challenges while I was away. I don't know how many I can catch up on, but one I didn't want to miss was the featured stamper challenge from Sunday. The featured stamper was Anne Ryan, who is such a sweet person and an awesome stamper. She frequently comments on my cards and I always appreciate what she has to say, so I'm happy for a chance to honor her!

I chose this card to CASE. I haven't even looked at the gallery of challenge cards but I'm sure I'm not the only one to have picked it. I chose this one in part because it was Anne's card for the inspiration challenge I hosted last month. I also just liked it!

I kept the use of dots and flowers, the black accents, and the general layout. My panels are different sizes and I added the sentiment panel. I did my ribbon differently - why do I not have wide black organdy?? - and left off the charm.

This card started with the Scenic Route floral paper - I wanted something I could use with black. It was shocking to me (it probably shouldn't have been) how many florals I have with brown in them! I really wanted to resist falling back on that color. I chose a coordinating sheet of textured Bazzill cardstock and black for the layers. The background is the polka dot background stamp on very vanilla cardstock.

I had a hard time with the stamped image. I couldn't decide what stamp to use and in the end went with this image from the Just Celebrate set from the spring/summer mini catalog. It was also tough getting the right color to match the paper. I stamped in basic black and then colored the flowers with Tombow markers. The darker color is actually a blend of two markers: by coloring on an acrylic block, first with a lighter marker and then with a darker one, you can mix custom colors. You just pick up color with a blender pen and color on paper or rubber as you would with any other marker. Usually I'm pretty good at mixing and matching colors but it didn't work as well this time.

The sentiment came from Thank You Kindly. The two stamped images were cut and embossed with Nestabilities and layered onto black. For assembly I put a strip of wide black grosgrain ribbon under the center panels and then mounted everything together. Only the sentiment is up on dimensionals this time. What do you think? I am not 100% happy with the stamped and colored flowers, but otherwise I really like this card. I think I will experiment more with black and vanilla!