fresh & fun

Rick is temporary commander of the entire communications squadron at Eglin AFB right now. He will have this title (along with longer hours, more weekend work and no extra pay) until the middle of July, when the new commander arrives. Besides having to work even longer hours, he has a lot more people “under” him. One of them is getting married and he asked me to make a card.

  I started with a 5 1/4″ square card of shimmery white.  I cut a piece of 3″ x 5″ paper out of Paper Salon Swatches. I used the ticket corner punch on the bottom two corners. I added a 3/8″ x 5″ strip of brushed silver on the top of the Paper salon paper and adhered some of my new white ric rac ribbon (May Arts) over that.

The main image is stamped with Petal Prints, one of my all time favorite flower sets. I used Regal Rose and stamped the darker looking images one time off, the other two or three times. I used Certainly Celery for the fern stamp. I also stamped it off once before putting it on my shimmer white paper.  The saying is from the stamp set In my Thoughts. The main image is layered on Rose red cardstock.

I added a little bit of paper piercing and a metal rimmed tag with flower punchouts made with the Spring Flower Punch.  I like how it turned out. I hope Rick will like it too.

Julia made me shudder this morning. Today’s challenge is to use Orchid Opulence. I was like “Really?” (Think Grey’s Anatomy…can’t wait for tonight!) I thought that color is only there to collect dust in my stamp room. LOL

I knew the layout I wanted to use before I knew anything else. I had the Papercraft magazine from December folded open  for a while now with a great layout that I had been meaning to case.

I decided to jump right in and make Orchid (still shuddering) my card base. Next I pulled out a gazillion colors to see what could possible look good (or at least not make me gag) with this color! First I had to decide between black and chocolate. Most of my cards have one of these colors in it. They are great to accentuate and pull out colors. Since I didn’t really want to make it any brighter, I optioned for Chocolate Chip. I stamped my chocolate cardstock with the Paisley background in Chocolate chip, distressed the edges with the cutting tool from Stampin’ Up! and sponged them with chocolate chip.

Next I had to decide on what color my flower accents would be and what I would use. I used both the regular flower and the spring flower punch and after much punching, decided on Pumpkin flowers (sponged with red) and red centers (sponged with chocolate).

I needed a big image for the center panel. A few of the answers for mylast blog candy question were Summer by the Sea. So I pulled out my neglected girl, stamped her on watercolor paper with brown stazon, spritzed the paper with water and started coloring with aqua painter and reinker (Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin Pie, Apricot Appeal, Cool Caribbean, Old Olive, Creamy Caramel, More Mustard, Real Red, Blush Blossom and Orchid Opulence.

I layered the image on Apricot Appeal cardstock that I had sponged with Pumpkin Pie. The patterned  paper from the Petals & Paisley designer paper pack was sponged with chocolate chip . I taped everything on my 5 1/4″ orchid card base and added faux stitching.

I stamped Happiness from the set Warm Words on watercolor paper and scribbled Orchid over it with my aqua painter. The hardware is from the Antique Copper Hardware kit. Ribbon is red grosgrain and white organdy ribbon from Stampin’ Up!.

I am glad I didn’t sit this challenge out. But it wasn’t easy not to!