Friday Featured Card... by HardwoodsRUs

I'm SO excited to bring you today's featured card!  Why... because it TOTALLY inspired me to make a card that I LOVE! 

I was browsing through the gallery this morning thinking, "I'm so not in the mood to be creative, I'm just going to pick a card that looks similar to something I've already made and blog that."  Really... I'm being embarrassingly honest here... I just didn't feel like making a card. 

BUT... when I found this amazing card by HardwoodsRUs, I immediately felt a spark... and that's all it took!  It was a TRUE inspiration.  I fell in love with the single-layer collage look... and of course all the sponging and the monotone softness of it.  I think it looks so clean and yet so sophisticated.  I wanted to copy it exactly I loved it so much... but I decided to "make it my own" by changing it up.  It turned out even more different than I expected.

I needed to make a wedding card for one of my hubbie's coworkers, so I started with the sentiment (Verve).  I pulled out a couple of background stamps from SU and my flower silhouette stamps (Inkadinkadoo).  I knew I wanted a monotone look and my pumpkin paper was sitting out on my desk, so that is what I used.  (I also used So Saffron and Very Vanilla.) 

I created a few masks and started by inking Scattered Straw distress ink around the edges and then stamped Canvas, French Script, and Weathered in various shades of yellow ink around the piece.  I pulled out the pumpkin ink and started stamping up some flowers.... building the layers and getting darker as I came forward.  

I almost stamped the sentiment on the card itself and left it at that, but I decided I wanted a bit of "layering" going on.  I stamped the sentiment and punched it out and layered it over a strip of pumpkin ribbon.  To balance the "top heavy" card, I added three pearls along the lower left edge. 

I'm SO excited about how this turned out.  It came together really quickly and turned out even better than I had hoped.  Thanks to HardwoodsRUs for the much needed inspiration this morning! 

Thanks all for stopping in.  Have a wonderful weekend!
colleen