Wishing for spring

I'm really enjoying playing some challenges this week. It's been so busy and I've missed out on so many! Today's sketch challenge was right up my alley - my favorite kind of layout. I did tinker with it some, though - I didn't realize exactly how much until I sat down to upload my card!

I felt like making a springy card today. I wanted to use the Great Friend set from the mini catalog, which I love but really haven't played with much yet. I started out by inking the butterfly with baja breeze and then adding basic gray with the rock 'n' roll technique. I cut out the butterfly and mounted with dimensionals over the frame image, which was stamped in cameo coral (stamped off once) and also cut out. I used a square of basic gray cardstock to set the frame and butterfly off.

For the larger rectangle I stamped the leaf image once in basic gray, and then covered most of the stem with a post-it note, inked the stamp again, removed the post-it, and added leaves where I wanted with the Stamp-a-ma-Jig. I know you can do this with a marker, but I find if I'm stamping with both the ink pad and the marker, the color variation stands out too much. I kept adding leaves until the branch looked nice and full. The flowers were cut out from the DP from A Walk in the Park, which is also used for the tall background panel. (Too bad they didn't give us this flower in a stamp - I would have loved that.) To finish this panel I added piercing, the sentiment in baja breeze, and a layer of cameo coral cardstock. I sponged the edges of the large panels with basic gray. Then I assembled all of this onto a top-folded baja breeze card, with the white satin ribbon from the mini catalog as an embellishment.

Doesn't this make you want spring to just get here already? At least in Massachusetts, we are still waiting!