A Tale of Two Cards

 Hi there!  Welcome back to my stamping room where ideas run amuck, or something like that...  It's been a little frustrating in my stamping room the last two days. I've got ideas galore, but when I start putting all the components together it's kind of a ho-hum deal.  Yesterday I had a great idea to make a blending brush sort of halo background and play around with the Nature's Harvest Bundle again.  I just love the way the stamps and dies play so nicely together, but can stand on their own just fine.  Ok, I did the Blending Brush background in the upper middle of a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock using Mango Melody for a gorgeous soft golden-orangey color.  Turned out great, and is perfect for fall.  Next up I stamped the coneflower bouquet on Very Vanilla using Memento Tuxedo Black ink.  Colored in the images with the Stampin' Blends alcohol markers.  That turned out nice too.  Putting it together?  Not so much.  Really pretty dog-gone boring at this point.  So I set that all aside overnight to come back to later.

Today, the idea of using the Artistically Inked stamp that looks like a cool alcohol ink background (or maybe just a long smudge) to color a fall background and add some of the really bold Love of Leaves images to make a really bold fall card.  Yes, I did the background and loved it.  Then stamped seven of the leaves with multiple fall colors and die-cut them.  Good so far.  When I tried putting it together, it was all so busy together it gave me a headache.  Set that aside too.  So now these two bunches of card parts were just sitting there.  And that's when inspiration struck - why not switch out the backgrounds and see what happens!  So here is one of them.  Tomorrow you'll get the second one.  Hope you like...

This shows the background using the Artistically Inked stamp.  Isn't is awesome?  The background piece of Very Vanilla has three different inks - Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight, and Bumblebee.  My Bumblebee ink pad is so juicy I had to off-stamp to get a decent color, likewise with the Mango Melody pad.  The inks were stamped to cover, but not really overlapping, the cardstock piece that is 5" x 3 3/4".   It's really fun to see how these stamps quickly make this alcohol-inked background.

After stamping, this was layered onto a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock that is 5 3/8" x 3 7/8".  It just needed a little sliver of Very Vanilla to go between the colors and the dark card base I wanted to use.  I chose Soft Suede for this which is cut to 8 1/2" x 5 1/2", scored and folded in half.  Each layer here was attached with the Multi Purpose Liquid Glue.

Like I mentioned earlier, the coneflowers were stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored with Stampin' Blends.  The colors used were Mango Melody D, Pumpkin Pie L&D, Cajun Craze L, Old Olive L, Mossy Meadow L, and Crumb Cake D.  After coloring, it was die-cut using the coordinating die from the Harvest Dies.

To have these pretty flowers stand out from the background, I die-cut a piece of Soft Suede cardstock using the Stitched So Sweetly Dies.  It is a perfect foil for the flowers.  They are attached using Dimensionals and Mini Dimensionals where needed.

The sentiment comes from the Love of Leaves stamp set.  It was stamped on a strip of Very Vanilla cardstock using Soft Suede ink.  The one end was punched with the Banner Pick-a-punch.  One end was tucked under a flower stem and attached with adhesive.  The other end has a Dimensional popping it up.  

As I was putting the layers together, I noticed a piece of the Diamond Weave Ribbon that had been cut, but never used.  Hmmm...  I liked how it looked with the rest of the card, so why not?  I just used adhesive to attach it to the center of the card and then attached the focal piece to the card with Dimensionals.  Of course, I felt it needed just a little bling.  I used the 2021-2022 In Color Rhinestones that matched nicely.

The inside was finished simply with a little stamping with the same alcohol-ink stamp and some off-stamped Mango Melody ink and a little bit of the Daffodil Delight ink.  This is on the Very Vanilla layer and attached to the card base with the Liquid Glue.  

I figured this card would be used for one of my many notes I mail out to friends, so there are no sentiments stamped inside.  That's up to me to provide.

Well, that's it for the first installment on a Tale of Two Cards.  Hope you can see that the creative process doesn't always go smoothly, but you can usually do something with the unused parts and pieces.  It might not be exactly what you envisioned in your pretty little head.  But you never know, it might just be better!

Just a quick reminder that the current host code is on the top right corner of my blog post.  Thank you for your orders.  They are so appreciated, and so are you!  Enjoy your day, and don't get frustrated when your stamping projects don't turn out quite as planned.  You can always shuffle the pieces around and come up with something totally different.  There are no mistakes!  You can even pull the pieces of a card apart and start over.  And if there is absolutely no saving it?  Throw it away - it's only paper!  (OMG, did I say that?)  Start fresh and have fun!  That's what it's all about.

Blessings and many hugs,

Sharon