Scrappin' Saturdays

Oh, what a gorgeous morning it is here in Minneapolis! Yesterday it was nearly 50 (!), and today it will be the same! Since this is so warm for us in this part of the country, you'll see many people walking around without coats today, and even some in shorts!!! My son asked me yesterday if he could wear shorts to school Monday, and of course, I said no. He made some smart alec comment about me being unhappy in my childhood because I was saying no. Somehow, I don't follow his logic on this one, but whatever. He's 12!

For today's card, I raided the scrapbox again. Here are the pieces I started out with to make the first card. I even made a bonus card for you so you could see just how far your scraps can take you! It's so fun having a challenge in front of you before getting started, isn't it? I think scraps are a big challenge for lots of us. Break into your scrapbox today and join me in seeing what creations you can come up with using only scraps!

All I did was start snooping through my box to see what paper I could find that got my creative juices flowing. First, I found the brown designer paper with flowers. Next I found the scrap piece of red Basic Grey paper. The red in the Basic Grey paper tied in with the red flowers in the brown designer paper. After that, out came this Bohemian piece of blue paper. It had brown swirls on it which I figured would tie in with the brown flower paper. And finally, for some reason, I saved this harlequin BG stamped paper that ended up in my designer paper scrapbox. It looked good with the rest of the papers, so I thought, why not? I added it to my mix. I'm sure you've noticed that really, NONE of these papers are of the same style. The brown designer paper is cutsey, the red Basic Grey paper is sophisticated, and the blue Bohemian paper is eclectic. But, I love a challenge, so off I went!

Here's the first card I made....

I matted the brown designer paper with Real Red. On top of the brown designer paper, I laid vertically a strip of the Basic Grey red paper. Over that, I horizontally laid the Bohemian paper down. I distress both of these papers with my Ranger Distress Ink in Walnut Stain. The sentiment, by Paper Bag Studios, was matted on the harlequin stamped paper, but I distressed that piece as well because it was a bit too bright and cheerful on the card! In it's original form, it wouldn't have really looked that great on the card, but with a little distressing....magic! The sentiment is attached to the card with foam tape to make it stand out from the rest of the design. Once all the papers were attached, it was still missing something, but I couldn't figure out how to attach a ribbon. There was really no place for it. Finally, I decided to just lay a piece of ribbon across the card horizontally above the sentiment. I liked how that looked, but it was STILL missing something. The red flower on the right, with a large circle brad in the middle of it, was added finally, and, IMHO, balanced out the red on the left of the card in the Basic Grey paper.

When I saw that I still had a few small scraps of paper left, I challenged myself to make ONE MORE CARD out of the leftovers. This is what I came up with. Very simple, not alot of WOW factor, but fun nonetheless!

There's a funny story, sort of, with this card. See that lovely flower in the center? It's a new stamp I bought by Inkadinkado. I stamped it on a piece of watercolor paper and then watercolored it with my aqua painter. Since the rest of the card is distressed, I wanted to distress this piece too. First of all, know that I have a sponge for my Tea Stain Ink, and I have a sponge for my Walnut Ink (which is WAY darker). I never distress a whole image, ever, with Walnut Ink, because it's too dark. I always use the Tea Stain. So guess which sponge I accidentally grabbed to distress the flower with????????????????????? Is there any question? The Walnut Ink sponge. I distressed the flower with the Walnut Ink sponge. Eee-gad. See why I don't distress whole images with Walnut Ink? The more I looked at it, the more I thought "all is not lost". I decided to use the image anyways, since the whole card had that distressed look. It's a little dark, but, I'm ok with how it turned out. It's not perfect, but I'm learning how to get past that in my work. Perfections cause ulcers, and I don't want an ulcer!!! Onto the card it went. Not too bad, IMHO!