Balloon Rally

I have been posting so little because I've been working frantically to get ready for our town's annual balloon rally, held the third weekend of August each year. I have not sold cards locally since the year I made this card ... which never sold. Happily, I kept it, so with a little tweaking it will go into the craft store this week. :-)

Sisters collage

I don't know if these two are supposed to be sisters, but that's what I think of when I see it this image. I am borrowing a bunch of Paperbag Studios stamps from a friend; I wanted to make sure that if I get to a place of being able to order some of them, I would actually be able to work with them.

Though I absolutely love the look of collage, I have done little of it. I had a day about a week ago to work with these stamps, and just could not get anywhere. I have a perfectionist streak which dramatically affects how much work I get done. Because I am very aware of my inexperience and lack of knowedge, I spend an ridiculous amount of time making decisions in my cardmaking. Today I was determined that instead of taking ten minutes to decide if I should stamp an image in a certain place, I was just going to "do it!!" When I found a background paper I liked, I resisted (well, after a minute or two!) looking for a "better" paper. Once I had the card more or less done, I stopped myself from continuing to play around with the embellishments.

So, whether the card is a technical success or not, I am delighted with it because I did not second guess ( or 3rd, 4th, 5th guess!!)myself at every step!

smARTworks challenge

This "card" comes from a smARTworks challenge that Trish submitted: create an interpretation of the painting (the source of it is linked on her sight). Well, I thought it would be fun to essentially recreate it as much as I could. I put "card" in quotes because I plan to disassemble it ... I can't imagine using it, and I don't want to waste the brads! (If I were going to actually use it for a card, I would have put copper eyelets instead). Great challenge, Trish! It was nice to make something just for fun tonight!

I used a texture stamp from Stampers Anonymous for the backgrounds on the top, text stamp and flowers are smARTworks. I used butterscotch adirondack ink at the top, with distress inks in tea dye and vintage photo for the top. I used vanilla Memories DTP and white craft ink for the bottom. Flowers stems in green craft inks, flowers stamped and embossed with white. (The emboss was an after thought when I saw the white craft ink was not enough. Because of the delay in scrambling for white embossing powder, a couple of the flowers are too dim).