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Hello, ladies! (And my apologies if we have any gents. Hello to you, too! *waving*) And happy Tuesday to everyone. Having been out of the swing of things for so long, I'm feeling a little rusty but am SO loving be back in the craft room and back in good graces with my card-making mojo!

Today, I'm sharing the second card that I made last night. This card will complete our custom order for a 21-card variety pack for our customer's grandmother. So without further adieu, let's get to it.

To finish out the pack, I needed a baby card design. Whitney did a fantastic job of keeping all of the baby designs fairly gender-neutral. And my choice of color scheme (a la this week's CR84FN Color Challenge 29) kind-of teeters on the edge. I really liked this week's Mojo Monday Sketch 192, and so that is the inspiration behind the layout.

I had great fun sorting through our stash of patterned papers for this design. To me, the sketch really allowed for larger patterns. I was thrilled to find two very fun patterns in the stash. I mean, who doesn't love cheetah print? *grin* And the large polka dot worked perfectly to give the eye a rest from all of that wild cheetah print and it also made a perfect grounding for the sentiment.

You'll notice I adapted the sketch in several ways. Since our aim for this custom order was to keep all of the designs light enough to mail with a standard first-class postage stamp, I opted to eliminate the bottom layer (shown in black) of matting beneath the patterned paper. Instead, I cut the patterned paper just a wee bit smaller than the kraft background I was using and allowed that to peek from behind and serve as my mat. Secondly, in lieu of the ribbon in the center, I opted to use a larger sentiment stamp as the center element and matted it in a plum color just a shade darker than the plum I stamped the sentiment on to give it just enough dimension to be the all-important focal point. I loved the scallop circle element in the sketch and chose to keep it by punching my own scalloped circle from a sheet of cork. I was so excited to finally have the opportunity to use cork on a card! I added a threaded button in the center and popped it all up to give the allusion of a flower. You'll notice that I did not completely eliminate the tag element from the sketch. Instead, I left long tails on the threading, allowing the bottom tail to drape across the sentiment panel.

When all was said and done, I was elated with the finished result. I must admit that I doubted myself just a wee bit on my combination of patterns. But as I suspected when I got started, the sketch was the key to making them all work together in harmony! I hope you agree!

Thanks for visiting today - have a great day!