Color Blocking

I'm participating in Papertrey Ink's Make it Monday Challenge. I enjoyed this one very much, and the design came together very quickly for me ... I am normally super slow in this area!  Alas, when I stamped the sentiment, I did not realize that ink had gotten on one of my fingers, and I ended up with a nasty black smudge.  What to do?  I could have trimmed the card down, but I don't like to have overly bulky panels.  So, I added the smallest version of the leaves from this feather set.  I love plain and simple cards, so I would not have wanted the added leaves if not for needing to cover up my mistake!

The original:

Don't worry!

Papertrey Ink has wonderful challenges that come with tutorials, and this week's challenge, "Emboss Resist Shadow Sentiments" had a technique that I have used often, but never the particular way demonstrated this week, which I like very much.  This attempt did not turn out  perfectly, but well enough to provide me a card that could be sent to a male, which is always harder to do (for me)! I do wish I had used cream cardstock instead of white, but as often happens, I didn't go quite in the direction I had planned to in making this card. Stamp is from the New Every Morning set.

Summer Roses

The current theme at Impression Obsession is "It's Getting Hot in Here!" calling for warm, summery colors.  I chose the Rose Squares image, embossing with gold and chalking in color. For the background I used the Cover-a-card rose background. I stamped it with white embossing powder, then sponged pink, yellow and peach inks over it.

I really like to have a text for any card I make, but this just seemed complete without any!

IO challenge: Animal Friends

I'm posting for Impression Obsession's Animal Friends challenge.  I don't own any animal stamps from IO, but I love the animal skin background cover-a-card stamps.  This one utilizes the CC133 Cover-a-Card Leopard stamp,  with the Happy Birthday die from the from the Greetings: Top Edgers die set.  I backed it with vellum because the text needs just a little something to make it stand out from the background.

Zebra Birthday

Impression Obsession's current challenge is "Unlayered." I love simpler cards, so I was happy for this challenge.  I decided to make a birthday card for a boy, and used the Cover-a-Card Zebra, stamped directly on the card base, and the birthday die from the Greetings: Top Edgers set.

The Blues!

Impression Obsessions bimonthly challenge is (Not So) Moody Blues! I love working with blue, so I was quite happy for this challenge.  Brown is a great color to pair with blue, especially when making a card for a male recipient, as was the case with this card.  I used the Cover-a-Card Ornate Floral and the thank you from the Greetings: Top Edgers die set. Lately I've realized I have a lot of ink pads that are dried out, some of them deteriorated to the point that they will no longer wick the ink to the surface of the pad.  Not sure what the problem was with the craft ink I stamped on the blue cardstock with, but it did not do full coverage. So, before ironing off, I sponged reds and blues to distract from the imperfect image.  Happily, it actually looks better than it appears here, though I still would like to redo this card ... when I get some fresh craft ink!

Challenge: Redo!

This final challenge for Papertrey's current contest is to redo a card we were dissatisfied with earlier in the contest.  This is the entry and post for that day:

This is a card for Papertrey's "Make it Monday," Kraft and Colored Pencils. I ended up getting derailed in making this today due an unexpected situation that came up, and ran out of time to finish working on it, so it is not, in fact, a finished card, but temporarily glued until I get it to the place I want, which will likely include another frame layer, and solid paisleys, rather than the detail cuts.  Actually, I suspect when I am finished there will be a number of differences.  The paisley dies and the scripture are all stamped on kraft cardstock and colored in with Prismacolors.

I spent some time on reworking this card, but am still not satisfied, so it's still not actually assembled!  One thing I wanted to do was edge the card with paisley, and this is where I am not satisfied:

So, I have eliminated the paisley "edger" for now, and redesigned the card this way:

I think a need a day or two let it just sit, and hopefully when I come back to it I'll have decided what to do!