March Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Welcome to my stop on the Family Legacy Blog Hop. You should have come from Jen's blog. If you ever get lost, head over to Melinda's blog for a complete list of participants.

I made two cards for today's hop. The first one comes with both a warning and a bit of hope. Here's the warning: sometimes it takes a long time and a lot of fussing before a project works. Here's the hope: almost everything is fixable.

My original card didn't include the dark brown center panel. It was the lighter panel which I'd fussed with quite a bit. I started by stamping the floral corner in Toffee. I then random stamped "Love" and a few of the other images in Peach ink. I didn't feel like it showed up well but was willing to go with it. I then white embossed the floral corner, offsetting it from my original stamped image, and the Congrats sentiment from what I consider a staple of my crafty stash, Melissa Esplin Sentiments. This set is in the Core Catalog and is always on my desk.

Once that stamping was done, I created the background panel.  I stamped Love and it's coordinating small definition from Family Legacy in Toffee and the corner floral in Peach over top of the butterfly paper in the new Mix-In's Paper. Here's a close up of the corner so you can see that slight texture of peach on peach.

I then glued the light brown panel to my peach colored background, both of which were first run through the Stitched Rectangle Thin Cuts. Then I started fussing. I'll spare you the gory details. Suffice it to say that I was never happy with it. There just wasn't enough color contrast. So...I created a second center panel by white embossing the sentiment and floral corner. I planned to just glue it over top of the light panel but, after fussing some more, decided I liked the offset look. To embellish, I stamped a small image from Family Legacy in Toffee over the White Ribbon. After everything was glued together, I kept looking at it and looking at it and looking at it. I wasn't happy until I created that little heart by white embossing the same image used on the ribbon over Smoothie paper and cutting it with the small heart that comes in the new Seas the Day Cardmaking Workshop. Maybe I should have done it in Peach cardstock to keep the colors the same, but I kinda like the little pop of Smoothie.

This card took a long time, but here's more good news...

...the leftovers made this card come together in a snap. I already had the Smoothie cardstock out, so I just stamped the floral corner in Espresso first, embossed "Love" in white over the top, and cut it out with the largest Stitched Heart Thin Cuts. (NOTE: be sure you let your background ink dry and then use an anti-static pouch over your paper before embossing. I forgot that my first attempt and ended up with white powder clinging to my flowers. It wasn't a good look and is why there's a qualifier on my earlier assertion about things being fixable. It wasn't, so I went with my other rule to live by: it's only paper!)

To create the banner, I stamped the coordinating sentiment in Espresso on a scratch piece of paper and cut it out with my Microtip Scissors. After gluing it to the heart and foam mounting both over top of my two leftover frame pieces from the first card, I added some sequins to bling it up.

And now I have two wedding cards ready to go!

Speaking of going, your next stop is Kathy's blog. The hop is a circle so keep going until you see all the inspiration provided by these remarkably talented ladies.

Until next time,
Becca