{ Just Playing Around }

Well I don't really know how I feel about this one. I like the background a lot. but I don't really card for the ribbon and the sentiment w/it's layers. I did this for today's SCS sketch challenge which is where I got the layout from. I've been playing with it for hours! Seriously. The background turned out exactly like I had in mind when I started and it didn't take too long. But I couldn't seem to do anything else with the card. I tried five different sentiments, set in different ways and I tried three or four different kinds of ribbon with different hardware. This is the best I could come up with. I was really discouraged and didn't feel like stamping anymore, but the mail man just came.... some new goodies just arrived! So my motivation to stamp is back!

The background was done with reverse masking. I used a piece of cheep cardstock and my scalloped square punch to make a template. I made it by punching the scalloped square out four times to make a larger square. I then lightly taped it to the card and applied pastels to the base of the card to make the large brown square. I then stamped the flourish images three time and colored parts of them in with watercolor crayons and went over that with Stickles- oh boy to I love my new Stickles! I also used the watercolor crayons and Stickles on the sentiment which I punched out with my scallop punch, sponged and layered onto a larger scallop punch. I also wrote over the sentiment with Crystal Effects to make the sentiment pop a little more. That may be difficult to see in the picture, but in real life it looks great! The base cardstock and the sentiment layer are sponged with chalk ink.

So the mail man dropped off two new embossing folder and a new die. The folders are from the new line, I got Spots & Dots & Traffic Jam. Looks like Provocraft fixed their folders this go around. So there are no more light squares that will imprint on the cardstock! I was so happy to see that! I know it's dumb and hardly noticeable, but it really bugged me! Anyway, off to play!!

Supplies:
Stamps: Autumn Leaves Flourishes; Stampendouos Sentiment
Paper: SU Very Vanilla, So Saffron
Ink: Color Box Chestnut Roan
Embellishments: SU Ribbon
Other: Marvy Scallop Punches; Ranger Stickles; SU Pastels, Watercolor Wonder Crayons, Blender Pen, Crystal Effects; EK Success Round Corner Punch; Misc Sponge Daubers
Techniques: Sponging, Reverse Masking, Watercoloring