Our Wednesday snow-in was quite productive as Whitney and I Skyped about a
bunch of different design ideas. Aside from the fact that we like to come up with new product on a regular basis, we've also come to really enjoy the weekly challenges that are hosted by a number of different companies and bloggers out there. In fact, as I've said before, they've really become our go-to places for design inspiration. It's nice to have at least half of the guesswork out of the way, YKWIM?
It's now become a challenge
to us to see just how many birds we can kill with one stone. *snicker* Today, we're knocking out not one, not
two, not
three, but
FOUR challenges with ONE card! Can you say KA-CHING?!
You may find this surprising, but until this week, I had not made my hubby's Valentine. *gasp* I know! So given that we would be incorporating love into the card (in order to meet a challenge), it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get his card knocked out!
Actually, two challenges lent themselves to a Valentine:
Papercrafts Simple Sentiments Challenge and the
Lawnscaping All About Love Challenge. Having the overall theme and some elements in mind, we began the card design by selecting a layout, which is based on
this week's sketch over at My Favorite Things. Now we needed a color scheme. Knowing that this Valentine is going to my husband, I needed the color scheme to be a bit more on the masculine side. After much searching through this week's myriad of color challenges, we settled on the
Embellish Color Trends Challenge with Hearts. How fitting - not only does the color scheme fit the bill, it includes hearts as well!
Now it's time to get started on construction. I started with an artichoke base, leaving a narrow border of the white card base exposed. And I had the perfect pink polka dot in the stash for the vertical panel. I opted for ribbon rather than paper for the horizontal strip across the middle. For extra color dimension, I went with a shade of artichoke that was a tad darker than my cardstock, but that wasn't quite enough. It still needed something. Plus, it still left me without the minty greenish color. So I dug through the ribbon stash again and found this lovely scalloped jewel that was perfect. We were thrilled to discover that one of the simple sentiments downloaded from Papercrafts was a good fit for the shaped panel in the sketch. Since the original sentiment was completely in grayscale, I pulled it into PS Elements & added some color to a few of the elements. This helped pull in one of the tough colors (for me anyway): the red. I opted to print the image on photo paper for a little extra pop and then cut it out & popped it up. To meet the hearts requirement for the Embellish challenge, I dug through our button stash and found several hearts. And whaddya know ... they were the perfect shade of PINK to boot! I also found the perfect color red, though I didn't want it to be a predominant color so I stuck to just one round red button. I threaded all of the buttons b/c they just didn't look right nekked (to borrow from
Julie Ebersole). With all of the buttons in place, it just didn't feel right. So I opted to break up the threesome in opposing corners and fill in with some smaller elements - pearls!
When it was all said and done, I was quite pleased with this little card. Not only did it meet the challenges, it also met my own personal goal - the perfect masculine Valentine for the hubby.
Thanks for stopping in today! I'm off to enjoy some quality time with my sweetie.
Today, I am gonna share with you a super sweet Valentine's card I made for my HunnyBun. Susan and I are momentarily locked out of our craft room, so with the latest Lawnscaping Challenge, I headed to Hobby Lobby for inspiration. With only a couple stamp sets, 2 ink pads, and a punch, I chose to focus more on patterned paper from The Paper Studio to fill the space. I absolutely LOVE :) how it turned out! I even thought up an adorable Wallet Lovin' to accompany it. You can check out our post on what Wallet Lovin' is here...it really is perfect for Valentine's Day, or any other day for that matter!
Sometimes I impress myself with what I can whip together with minimal supplies..and in a minimal space! It is almost refreshing when you can make something out of nearly nothing! I love that feeling! (Just disregard the messy desk and poor lighting!)
