Concept evolution

I got this great card from Emily for my birthday last year. I was looking around my sunroom for inspiration, and noticed it, and remembered that I have the same patterned paper it's based on. And I'm terrible at using orange, so I decided to take a shot at putting my own twist on it.



This was my first iteration - this is how I do things sometimes. Take someone else's concept, basically copy it with a few minor changes, and see what I come up with. If I like it, I'll keep working. In this case, I used my own "Wise Owl" stamp set from Papertrey, a rub-on from a retired Stampin' Up rub-on set for the branch, pearls instead of rhinestones on the corners, and moved the flowers to the left - I made the sentiment part of the image, since I had to enlarge the image a bit to fit the larger owl.



This is my latest iteration, one that I felt comfortable putting on etsy. I obviously don't like putting near-copies of other people's cards up to sell, so I use them as personal cards and as stepping stones to my own creations. In this case, once I was a little more comfortable using orange, I pulled out some AWESOME Sassafras Lass paper (seriously, I love this stuff... I end up buying about three sheets of each paper because both sides are so cute) that has an orange theme, and managed to find some blue and orange scraps in my file to coordinate. I mounted this on kraft paper, because I think it enhances the 60s-style look of the paper, and used a scrap of the kraft for the birthday sentiment. This one's a bit simpler than the original, and I think it's a bit more earthy - it's a very different style for me, but I love it!