Mixing it Up

Happy Saturday! I hope you're all enjoying a little respite from the work week. I know I sure am. Whitney and I have been quite busy with a queue FULL of orders. Whoohoo!

Today I'm bringing you one design that we made for a client who was looking for a unique set of thank-you cards. When I saw this month's Diva Dare over at Verve, I just knew it would be perfect for this set. AND we have this pack of patterned paper that we've just been itching to use on something. And *voila* this beautiful card was born.

Do you ever have paper that you just fell in love with but then find difficulty using? That would certainly apply to the paper we used for this set. It's all cream & white patterns - a mixture of toile, stripes, filigree, and damask. Simply stunning but a bit challenging to use without losing it in the overall design of the card. With designs this gorgeous, you want them to speak for themselves, if ykwim?!

Oddly enough, we hadn't thought to let the patterns stand alone until the Verve Divas dared us to be Sentimental About Paper! All we needed was a few pop dots, a little pop of sparkly color, and a simple sentiment to make the design complete. Why a simple sentiment? Well, for this particular job, we didn't need a sentiment that said it all because the client would be using these beauties to write personal notes to her intended recipients. But you can see how this design is easily adaptable to accommodate a much larger/longer/wordier sentiment.

For me, the combination of this fantastic paper along with the beautiful turquoise accents really seals the deal. Yum!

Thanks for stopping by today. Hope you've enjoyed the visit.

Coral?? Really??

Howdy, everyone!

I hope you're staying cool. It sure is h-o-t, HOT here and I know it is in other parts of the country too. Sure, we're used to heat but not for a month straight! My poor a/c is running all. the. time. Which means that it's a great time to be inside making goodies!

Up for you this evening is a card for our new Simply Birthday pack. We want our pack to be as diverse as the people who will receive them, so we're mixing it up with images and color schemes.

Today's color scheme comes from this week's ColourQ challenge - early espresso, calypso coral, pool party, island indigo, and white. I'll be honest, I loved it all until I saw the coral. And you wanna know what I groaned to Whitney? "Do you think we can substitute an orange without anyone noticing? Orange is so much more ... I don't know, birthdayish." *snicker* Needless to say, I found this color scheme pretty challenging!

But once we started pulling papers and possible stamp sets to use, it all kinda came together. We saw this card by Mariana Grigsby in our browsing this week and decided the layout was just perfect for our card. We knew that our blue hues would serve as the anchors, while the key to making it all work would be to make the most challenging color - coral - the "color pop." What can be coral-colored? *insert Jeopardy theme* Of course...flowers! And that pared down our stamp choices considerably. We used the brown, along with pop dots, to make our sentiment panel stand out against the busy background and the scalloped grossgrain ribbon added a nice touch to finish it all out.

When all was said and done, I was surprised to find that I liked the card so much ... coral and all! So thanks, ColourQ, for making me spread my wings and break outside my very boring color box!!

Critters in the cake!

Heelllloooo Everyone!

We are so happy to bring to you an amazingly cute card we put together this week. We got some new Lawn Fawn stamps in, and after seeing Kelly Marie's you tube video using Bake Me A Cake here, we decided that paper piecing this cute card would be perfect! We also have some recent animal inspiration and thought we would go with that to bring extra cuteness to this birthday card! The polka-dot papers worked great for this fun cake...or stack of presents, whichever you see it as, and the orange, yellow, and blue accents seemed like good bold accents between the multitude of colors this card has going on! A simple layout inspired by the sketch over at Sweet Stop proved perfect for this cute little scene! A touch of color on the animals, a few pink noses, and it turned out better that we could have hoped!

Thanks so much for stopping by! We have more cute stuff coming over the weekend! So see you back here soon!

08/03/11: Thanks to the ladies over at the Lawnscaping Challenge who spotted this card on their patrol this week and gave us a shout-out on their blog!!

HELLLLOOOO!

Hi Everyone!!!

Susan and I have taken a little hiatus over the past couple weeks due to our ridiculously crazy lives, but we are back in full force and have TONS of projects to share with you. We have been busy, we just haven't snagged the time to post all of them right away. With that being said, we wanted to share with you all today another addition to our recently requested pack of cards titled "Difficult Anniversary". These cards are meant to be sent to someone on a difficult anniversary, be it a wedding or birthday of someone who has passed away. This card is one of my favorites and could be used for so many different occasions, but we chose an inside sentiment specifically for this pack. I never thought the color scheme would be so perfect, but it has really become a combo I am very fond of! It is amazing what 1 accent color can do for the whole card!!

Well, I hope you all love it as much as I do!

See you back tomorrow!!