Today’s card came out of my work on the #GDP027 Thank You challenge I showed on Monday.  After I  finished that card, I liked the colors so much, I decided to do another card with the same colors and try to use the Go Wild DSP Stack.  I don’t do a lot of graphic cards with matting and layers, but I have been collecting card layouts on Pinterest and learning more about this style of card making. And as I said Monday, you can never have too many Thank You cards on hand.  And this is a great masculine Thank You card.

I was kind of pleased with the result…if I don’t say so myself!  I went way out of my comfort zone on this card.  Even to the point of using two similar colors, the Crumb Cake over the Sahara Sand. For this, I took my cue from the DSP and used the Sahara Sand as the base color.  It made the card more interesting than using just the black and crumb cake only.  The retro look of the “Thank You” sentiment from One Big Meaning works well with this color scheme and DSP.

Recipe

Papers: Go Wild DSP Stack, Basic Black, Crumb Cake, Sahara Sand
Stamps: One Big Meaning
Tools: Chevron Border Punch

This is my entry for this week’s Global Design Project #GDP027…the Thank You card challenge. Click on the link below to check out all the great work everyone is doing this week.  Thank you cards are a great idea for this challenge. We all need plenty of Thank You cards on hand!

When working on an original design, I usually plan out a design in my head. It is usually when I am driving or doing something other than working at my stamp desk.  Whether I am looking at a magazine, Pinterest or even TV, I am always looking for ideas and filing them away in my head.

I always have a lot of great ideas that don’t look as good on paper as they looked in my head!  I really wanted to do something with florals in black and crumb cake for this design. Basic colors always appeal to me.  I had a vision of the florals arching over another stamp in this set, but I could not get it to work out.  When I went simpler and just used the leaves from Summer Silhouette, I got the look I wanted.

What I like about the colors is the simplicity and the fact this could be sent to women or men and it works for all types of “Thank You Card” needs.  I have to say Summer Silhouettes is one of the most versatile sets I own.

Recipe

Papers: Basic Black, Crumb Cake
Stamps: Summer Silhouettes, One Big Meaning
Inks: Basic Black Archival,Crumb Cake
Embellishments: Black Stitched Satin Ribbon, Linen Thread

This striking, bold card with a butterfly was a challenge from my friend Jayne to use some of this patterned paper from the Pretty Petals DSP stack.  She had a lot of it and wanted some ideas for a class.  I loved the paper the minute she showed it to me and wondered how I had overlooked it so many times! Haven’t we all done that with DSP? You always have patterns that you “love at first sight”.  If you take the time to go through your paper stash one more time, you can find many patterns that are definitely worth a second look.  And often, they can be just as striking in a card design as the “first loves”.

For this card, I really wanted it to be all about Pacific Point and black.  But there is a touch of Mint Macaron in the paper and a narrow border of Mint Macaron makes that color stand out and creates an interesting color play for the card design.  The black ribbon is a no brainer as are the butterfly cutouts.  The royal ballon was punched with the Balloon Bouquet punch, but I thought it really needed a mat, so I fussy cut the black balloon around it. Since black isn’t an option in baker’s twine,  I made do by unravelling the black from a strand of the 2-tone baker’s twine.  I had tried it with the black and Mint Macaron twine, but that was way too busy for this simple, bold card. The sentiment in the balloon comes from Happy Home.  But you could use whatever you can get to fit! A rhinestone was added to the butterfly just because I thought he needed a little dressing up!

Recipe

Papers: Pretty Petals DSP Stack, Basic Black, Pacific Point, Mint Macaron
Stamps: Happy Home
Embellishments: Basic Black 3/8″ Stitched Ribbon, Rhinestone Basic Jewels
Tools: Balloon Bouquet Punch, Blod Butterfly Framelits, Butterfly Thinlets