LIM19 - I've Been FRAMED!

WHEW! It's Saturday again! The weeks sure do fly by! What a great challenge we have this week at Less is More.  This is our one layer card week.  Easy...right?  I do this all the time. In fact, most of my cards are generally one layer...cause I love the look of one layer.  Oh, I can make cards with more than one layer, but sometimes I think they're more difficult. At least I did until I worked on this week's challenge!  I had in my mind what I wanted to do.  I wanted to stamp and image in a square/rectangle, and perhaps add a little clear embossing (after all, my embossing definitely needs practice!).  So, I get out my cool new HA stamp and get to work.  This card below is the result of the 4th card I tried to do this way. When I finished the first card, I realized the rectangle was crooked.  On the second card, the embossing powder didn't stick in the right places and I had it everywhere and the inking wouldn't cover it.  Third card looked pretty good until I realized that I'd stamped on the BACK of the card!  The fourth attempt looked really good...the embossing was great, the inking was great....unfortunately I had ink on my pudgy little fingers and managed to get it all over the white area around the image! gaah!!!  So...not willing to toss it completely, I cut out the stamped, embossed, inked image, mounted it on black card stock and added it to a blank card with a few pop dots and stamped a sentiment below the panel.  Whew! I finally gave up on this idea!

Then....looking through my stamps, I found these new stamps from PTI and realized they haven't seen ink yet either, so I thought I'd give it a try with them.  

First I drew a light pencil line where I wanted the base of the plant to be and stamped the image in Mementos brown.  The sentiment is also from PTI (another set).  I stamped that too.  In hindsight, I probably should have used clear embossing powder on these, but I didn't think of it until it was too late.  I used quite a few different distress inks...yellows, reds, walnut, stormy skies, purple....just a big mix.  Using a Spellbinder rectangle, I cut the center out of a piece of paper the same size as the card front to use as a mask for the inking.  After all the inking, I used a ruler and did a little faux stitching around the edges of the inked rectangle for my frame. Not totally happy with either of these cards, but maybe I'll think of something different later in the week.  If you follow my blog, I'll post any addition cards I might make here, but I probably won't link them to the challenge blog.  There's so many people playing now that I don't want to make more work for Mandi and Chrissie!

I'm sharing another layout with you today.  This is our beautiful granddaughter, Camilah and her prom date.  

I used a Martha Stewart around the page punch to make the blue background. I layered it on white card stock and then added a tiny blue border to the outside edges.  The leaves are a Sizzix die, the flourish tag is a Spellbinder die. Prom 2011 is rub on letters and then I pop-dotted the title on the swirly frame.  The flowers are a combination of Prima blooms (big blue ones) and punched blooms (little blue ones and pink ones).  I added a small pearl to each of the flowers.  The stitching is stamped. The oval tag at the top left is an oval punch and then I trimmed the green backing with scalloped scissors.  I added journaling on the tag behind the pink mat with the three pieces of bling to keep it from sliding under the pink mat. I also added a small piece of lace across the bottom of the pink mat.  Fairly quick layout, once I finally figured out what papers to use! LOL!

Another long post...Thanks so much for stopping by!  I appreciate each and every comment...you make me smile!  Until next time...

Hugs!