fresh & fun

I haven’t participated in the challenges on SCS for way to long. I really enjoy stretching myself. They help me working out of my comfort zone. I knew I had to start up again. I am caught up with whatever I had to do after vacation. So here it goes.

This weeks Color Combo is: Soft Sky, Blue Bayou and Cameo Coral.  The sketch for this weeks layout looked very fun. I had used this punchout/circle inlay on scrapbook pages before. I had never tried it on a card though.

When I read the color combo, I thought of the cute new set Merry & Bright from the Holiday Mini catalog. I just love the images in that set.

The card base is a 4 1/4″ x 8 1/2″ piece of Blue Bayou cardstock folded in half. The Soft Sky Prints Designer paper piece is 2 1/2″ x 4″.

My downline Stephanie came over on Tuesday for a tiny bit and brought her Scallop circle punch. I won’t get the replacement for my punch until September. Stephanie is coming over today and was kind enough to let me keep the punch until today.

I punched out a scallop circle out of Cameo coral cardstock, layed it over my coluzze circle template and picked a circle slightly larger. I used that circle to cut a half circle out of the Soft Sky Designer paper.

I taped the Soft Sky paper down and went a little crazy with my Argyle stamp from All in a Row. First I just stamp it around the straight edges, but NOOOOO, that didn’t seem enough. So I only inked up four or five diamond shapes at once and went around the cut out. Crazy, right? I am telling you, I am a bit obsessed with that stamp. The only cure for me is when that set retires. I will have to practise on that circular stitching with the stamp.

The little snowman was stamped with Black Stazon and colored in with Blue Bayou, Soft Sky and Cameo Coral and Aqua painter.  I stamped a few snowflakes in Soft Sky with the background stamp on the white and punched the image out with the 1 3/8″ circle punch.

I layered that image on my Scallop circle, added dimensionals on the back and adhered it centering it inside my half circle cut out. I added one of our tiny new Library clips on the side of the scallop circle and added a bit of black gingham ribbon.

Next I stamped the same background stamp in Blue Bayou over the Soft Sky Paper. It still looked too empty and it was missing just a dash more of Cameo Coral. So I used the new Snow Blossom Punch for a Cameo Snowflake and added a Jumbo eyelet in the center with my new Crop-a-dile. It’s so cool! I need to play with it more.