This was one of those cards...

that just didn't want to get done. I spent way too much time on this one - I hope it was worth it! This is my card for today's sketch challenge. Can you believe that I didn't combine it with any other challenges? LOL. I am going to post it to the Verve Divine Details Project Parade because I think it's a good card to explain my own creative process.

Since this was a sketch challenge I started by looking at the sketch and choosing which stamp set I wanted to use. I limited myself a bit in that I decided I would use one of my yet-to-be-inked sets from the new catalog, and I would do my best to make it SUO. Out of that selection the set that fit the sketch best was Gifts of Christmas.

Next I needed to choose colors. I was also trying to decide, did I want to color with markers? emboss? something else? I was just flipping through my cardstock and perfect plum jumped out at me. Based on that I decided to emboss the image onto the plum cardstock. I tried a couple things but in the end went with black EP. So that got me to my first two colors.

The next thing I did was the two black panels. Someone please correct me if this is not true, but I think I may have come up with something new. I first dry embossed the black cardstock with the new Perfect Details texturz plate. Then, as I was looking at it, I wondered what it would look like if I put Versamark onto the dry embossing and then heat embossed with clear EP. The answer is... it looks like this! It's hard to capture in a photo but IRL it looks really cool. It kind of looks like I made my own specialty cardstock. Here is what I did to get it this way:

1. Take the Versamark pad direct to paper (DTP) all over the panel.
2. Cover with clear EP and heat, making sure you really get all of the powder heated.
3. The coverage from the ink wasn't completely even and left some spots that weren't embossed as well, so I repeated the inking and embossing to get better coverage.

Here are a few tips for doing this technique: You'll want strong adhesive because the panels will curl (see photo). I recommend having the panels at the size you want before you emboss so that you don't have to cut into your embossing. And set them aside to cool in a safe place - other embossing powder that you might go on to use will stick if it lands on your panels.

OK, back to my card. At this point I was ready to start putting it all together, but I still hadn't chosen a background. I had been thinking of using white in some way, and I knew I didn't have any patterned paper that would work - but I did have the new Bride specialty paper. Oh my, this paper is gorgeous. I didn't realize until my black panels were done that they were too big to put on an A2 card, so I went for a 5.5" square. The base is perfect plum with a layer of black behind the white. To pick up the white paper somewhere else on the card, I paper pieced the dove. (Just to be safe I stamped on the specialty paper with jet black Stazon.) Deciding on this seems like a no-brainer in hindsight but it took me a while to get to this point. I won't bore you with my trial and error process - it was mostly error!

One thing that I have on most of my cards is ribbon. I just love ribbon, of all kinds, in all colors! I wanted something dramatic but still was trying for SUO. So I took two strips of 5/8" black grosgrain and wrapped them around right next to each other, then I covered the join with a strip of white satin ribbon. Voila - a wide black ribbon!

Now I was ready to attach the panels to the background. The image panel ended up being too small for the layout, so I added a layer in each of the three cardstocks I'd already used to make it larger. I love the result of this. Then it seemed like I had room for some kind of embellishment on the left side, which would be good for balance. I chose the biggest half pearls out of the Pretties Kit - I figured this card was dramatic enough to be able to carry them off! One other item that I use on just about every card is dimensionals. I used pop-up glue dots for the image panel, just to be sure that it would stick, and regular dimensionals for the dove.

So, that's my process... at least for this card! I had fun with this one, despite all the bumps along the way... and now I need to move on to some other work since I spent so much time stamping!