Evolution of an idea

Today's cards were made with my favorite new stamp set - I ordered it with the other stuff I showed off yesterday. It's called All Booked Up, and I got the bookplate die to go with it. When I ordered, I got a bag of cute green buttons that coordinate with their Spring Moss green that I love to use, along with some saddle-stitched ribbon in the same green and some twill tape (my favorite ribbon, I think) in the Hibiscus Burst pink. I wanted to integrate some of that, so I chose these colors and put it all together:



I liked how the first one worked out, but I felt like the overall color scheme was too dark for the springy pink and green, and it needed a little jazzing up over-all.



So when I made more, for a friend's birthday present, I went a shade lighter on the neutrals - white instead of kraft, kraft instead of Dark Chocolate. The rest of the colors and layout are the same, but I also used my Cuttlebug embossing folders to add a little texture to the background and pink stripe. Oh, and I wasn't very smart with the first one and put glue on the ribbon to stick it down - the glue soaked through and didn't dry clear like I thought it would. So with this one, I taped it to the back, then glued the bookplate shape over it to give it a little more stability. Turned out much better, I think! I love the effect of tying through the button with twine - I think it's a nice detail that gives it more interest than just a button by itself.

Back in the saddle again

At Lori's request/encouragement, I'm jumping back into this blog thing. For a while, I was living in an apartment with no good creative space - my office was basically a glorified laundry room, with no natural light and a noisy dryer running half the time, so I just wasn't that inspired to create. I also didn't have much storage/organizing space. Now we've moved to a new place where I have tons of great light, and I've been able to get my craft stuff out of storage bins and onto shelves where I can see everything to get inspired.

I also ordered some new Papertrey things - it's been a while since I've done a crafting order, so it was nice to have some new images and colors to get inspired by.

Since she encouraged me, I'll start with the card I made for Lori:



This card uses mostly new Papertrey materials - I based it around the"It's Official" patterned paper, picking up the colors and theme from that. The base is Dark Chocolate, with one of the It's Official patterns on top. I'd also ordered the cute Library Pocket die and Library Card stamp, so I used those, along with the Fresh Alphabet, to make the library card. On top are Hibiscus Burst tickets punched with my favorite new die, also from Papertrey, and stamped with Just the Ticket images. A couple of individual tickets, also stamped, are inside as a little accent.

I've got a few more things created, some with my new favorite stamp set - more blog posts coming!