Congratulations

Good Monday to all! I hope you all enjoyed your weekend. We've been busy here at HNI. Our Holiday Sweat Shoppe is going full throttle and we couldn't be more excited.

Today, though, I have a different reason to celebrate. Recently, some dear friends of mine got married, and no gift would be complete without a handmade card to express best wishes, right?! In making this special card, I took this design a step further by incorporating the bride's colors and a portion of the wedding invitation. And I found this Viva la Verve challenge perfect for the layout - a perfect balance of all of the elements I wanted to include. I used some Glimmer Mist to mute the white flowers and to change the color of my eyelet ribbon so that both would better coordinate with the other papers I had selected.

When all was said and done, I really loved the look and I especially loved the personal touches that let the new couple know that this card was made especially for them on their special day.

Thanks for stopping in today. We have some VERY exciting holiday reveals coming up this week; so be sure you pop back in!

CONGRATS!

Hello All,

It is about that time in the year, when graduates are making their way through finals, papers, and across the stage. What better way to tell them what a magnificent or amazing job they did (whether expected or not) than a fun and cheery Congratulations card! I know when I graduated, it was super exciting to see how many people were truly excited and congratulatory about my hard work and success. It really makes you feel appreciated after all those late nights in the library. So with that as my inspiration, I threw together the idea of STARS! and I love the simplicity of this card. It is definitely CAS with Kraft as a beautiful and complimentary backdrop to my bright and bold stars, and add a simple sentiment...TA-DA! I was stoked to decide that I would pop up the stars on 3, you heard it...3 different levels. It really gives it good dimension in real life, even though it is not SOO dramatic in the picture! I promise, it looks awesome! This worked out perfectly for the Pop It Up! challenge over at Paper Sundaes. It is my new favorite card, which I say often, but still!

Thanks for stopping by! May your stamps stay inky!!

Congrats, You're a Star

Hey, everyone! Thanks for stopping in this evening. It's shaped up to be a beautiful day here, which made it kinda hard to come home and go to "work" again. *grin* But I'm glad I did b/c I'm pleased as punch with the two cards I made tonight.

While on vacation, I left Whitney with the lion's share of the work on a custom order that I took before I left. The customer is looking for a wide variety of cards to give to her grandmother as a birthday gift - a total of 21 cards in all! Since our variety packs have been our biggest sellers (by the pack anyway), it actually turned out to be a great opportunity to develop more designs. I must say that Whitney did an AWESOME job while I was gone and made some really, really FANTASTIC cards - 19 in all!

So tonight, I'm sharing with you one of two that I am contributing to the pack: a congratulations design. Since we haven't had much time to participate in many challenges lately, I thought it would be a terrific opportunity to go searching for one or two for inspiration for this design. And I had no trouble finding a few to spur the creative juices.

I began with the layout, where I turned to this week's Sweet Stop Saturday Sketch 109 (w/ a spin!). The simple design made it easy to have the sentiment take center stage. Next, I needed a color scheme, and when I saw this week's Embellish Color Trends Tag Challenge, I knew that it would be absolutely perfect for what I had in mind.

With both sketch and color scheme firmly in hand, I set about trying to figure out how to make it all work. For me, the hardest part was figuring out how to make the pale, dusty pink work with such an overall masculine color scheme. And that's when it hit me: make it a small accent color. And *voila* that also solved the dilemma of how to make the center tag w/ its cute star punchout not disappear into the background. Two birds, one stone - me likey!

The other elements just fell into place. I knew I wanted the darkest color to serve as the backdrop for the whole design. And I liked the lighter blue as just the *pop* of color in the center. To draw one's eye to the focal panel, I chose to pop it up. Getting those lovely little tags to line up was no easy fete, but I managed to make it work ... somehow. (Now I know why I generally only use one of those at a time!) HINT: it never hurts to use a pop dot or two if you want tags to both pop out & stay put! When I was all finished, I felt like the card was still missing a little something. So I lightly misted it with GlimmerMist. Perfecto!

You wanna hear a funny confession?? I didn't even see "the spin" on the sketch until after I was composing this post! Awesome how it accidentally I totally intended to make it a masculine card and that it just so happened to give me the "spin" I needed! *snicker*

Thanks for stopping in this evening. Drop back in tomorrow for my second card!