Freshly Made Sketches

Hi Everyone,

The girls over at Freshly Made Sketches are celebrating their 200th challenge, and they are celebrating BIG!!!

As usual with big parties in blog land there are lots of sponsors and prizes to be won. I am joining the celebrations as part of the STAMPlorations Design Team.

Here is the sketch that got our creative juices flowing ...

I might have been pushing the boundaries of a clean look a little with my cards, but hey ... one can try. There is still some clean and crisp detail in my first card such as the stitched die cut border detail, the raised inlaid diecut sentiment and the clean and crisp edges.

So, how did I make my card? I was working with the Bloom Factory ARTplorations stencil and matching stamp set by STAMPlorations. I placed my stencil on a piece of white card and spritzed with pink color shine ink (Heidi Swapp). Once dry I die cut the stitched border (die by Lil-inker) and used the stamps from the Bloom Factory set to stamp the matching shapes in Crushed Curry (Stampin'Up!) on my lover panel. I then die cut my sentiment (Clearly Besotted) from my upper panel and twice more from white card before layering all on my white base card and adding a pink sequin to finish.

TIP!: Whilst the stencil was still wet, I placed it on another piece of card to get the imprint I used for my second card.

For this card, I combined my stencil imprint with stamps from the Mixed Media Grunge, Balloons & Banners and the Follow Your Arrow sets. To start with I was a little torn between using the imprint as was or to add a little depth by stamping through the stencil. Given the the sentiment was going to be very bold, I felt that my background needed a little more substance and I decided to go for the latter. I placed my stencil over the imprint and stamped the honeycomb stamp from the Mixed Media Grunge set through my stencil using Sahara Sand ink (Stampin'Up!). I then added a little border around and across in Crumb Cake using another stamp from the same set. I stamped my sentiment in Tuxedo Black (Memento by Tsukineko) and added the little lines either side before stamping the little hearts from the Balloons and Banners set in Regal Rose (Stampin'Up!). I finished off by adding some print detail in Tuxedo Black and Sahara Sand to two of the corners and layering on my black base card.

Again I am pushing it a little, but I think the straight line of my stamped sentiment and the three little hearts add enough of a clean look to hopefully let it pass.

That's it from me for now. I shall be back in a couple of hours time with my next instalment and contribution to the STAMPlorations Blog Hop.

See you in a little while.
Hugs
Monika xxx

here is what I used from STAMPlorations, links are in the above text: