Hi Everyone. Happy Tuesday. Hope you are all having a great start to your week!
Before I get to tonight's card, I'd like to say a huge thank you to the casethissketch team for choosing this card as the winning card for challenge number #74. I was absolutely thrilled! The team really does have some super cool sketches, and this week is no exception.
I had originally intended to make the right hand element much shorter than it ended up!!!! I had this idea to use chalkboard paint to create the background and do a chalkboard effect on it. However, after I had spent time applying - and drying - the chalkboard paint - my mind had gone in an entirely different direction and I decided to do a (very) fussy cut, paper pieced flower instead!
After using my scalloped tag punch on the chalkboard painted piece of card stock, I stamped the flower image onto two pieces of SU DSP and fussy cut out the stemps and the flowers. I shaded both the flowers and the stems... in fact, I spent ages shading the flowers! Creating depth on flowers seems to be my new obsession! I adhered the stems directly to the chalkboard tag and then popped the flowers up with dimensionals.
I wanted to create more of a focus on the middle of the flowers, so used some white Enamel Accents in the center of each flower. I stamped the sentiment from the "Express Yourself" set and adhered the tag to a Hello Honey base.
Here's my card
The only chalkboard type element that was left from my original idea was the sentiment! But, I like the way the white of the sentiment is picked up by the white in the middle of the flowers. I finished off the card with a little bit of ribbon from my fabulous friend, Pammie :-)
Don't forget to pop along to casethissketch and check out the fabulous design team and submission cards. Lots of inspiration for you! I also think the team would appreciate you playing along :-)
On a personal note:
Well, it's cold again! In fact, it was cold enough for us to need the heating on in the house today! We still have a LOT of water in the wetland and Lou and I are loving this new view from our home. I can't tell you how much joy seeing the different visitor's is giving us.
How about a couple of photos of the visitors?
Let's start with the jelly feeder! This feeder is sometimes like Penn Station. :-) Today there were 7 Orioles, two woodpeckers and a HUMMINGBIRD... yes, he's back! All waiting to get to the jelly. Here you can see a male and female Oriole and the Rose-breasted Grosbeak - who is also back for summer! I must admit, I love listening to the songs of the Orioles - they truly are a songbird.
Now, I apologize for the terrible photo... my camera focused on the trees.... but look at this new guy.... Certainly a first for us!
Whilst Lou was planting trees on Saturday, I spent a few minutes resting underneath the gazebo and had to take a shot over a little piece of the wetland. You can see the usual "wetland" sign. It's really hard to gauge the distance across the wetland, but it's not often you see this angle :-) Especially, as it's the first time we've been able to sit under the gazebo since OCTOBER!
One more, looking over the table. Now you can see how close the water is to our patio! All I can say is that we were very lucky that we put the patio where we did...it's on a little higher ground and therefore nice and dry. However, the water table has been so high that it has forced Georgina (our Groundhog) to vacate her burrow and move to higher ground. I do miss watching her house-clean everday and hope that she is safe and sound somewhere close by.
I'll be back on Thursday with another card. In the meantime warm hugs and prayers for those of you who need a little lift tonight. Sandy, so glad hubs is coming home on Friday!
Hugs
Jaydee
Card recipe - all ingredients Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted:
- Card stock: Hello Honey
- Stamps: Perfect Petals. Sentiment: Express Yourself
- Inks: StazOn black, Hello Honey, warm grey Copic (for shading)
- Tools: White Enamel Accent. Chalkboard paint
