Variations On A Theme, times 2

When I start out making a card, part of me wants it to be all Stampin' Up! products. This is largely due to the fact that I am always scrambling at the last minute to have five projects for my workshops, and if I can get that effort out of the way early ... well, sometimes it happens, but most of the time not.

I stumbled upon a card while surfing the SCS gallery this morning, and it reminded me I had some stamp sets still unmounted and neglected, so I mounted two of them and used them. The choice of color for these next two cards is no accident - they were already out, so I used them instead of having them be the beginnings of my pile-o-stuff that will need to be moved 3 weeks from now.

This card has the Floral bg stamped in Versamark on it, but it is tough to see with my seriously lacking photographic skills. I wanted to use the Delphinium ribbon for a closer color match, but it is retired, of course, so I used the Eggplant instead. I punched a Horizontal Slot in the front of the card to tie the ribbon through (through which to tie the ribbon), just to be different.

I went over the purple petals with a Versamarker and clear-embossed them, just for a little something extra.

This one I'm not likin' so much. I think these are just not my colors. Or something. First I forgot to ink up one of the circles of dots on the image, so I broke out my Boho Blossoms punch and covered that white space with a flower. I used the extra flowers as tone-on-tone embellishments, and added a bit of purple stickles to their centers because they were so boring. Did I already say I did not like this one so much?

Here is a close-up of the ribbons. The bottom layer is almost completely obliterated by the two ribbons on top of it. That bottom ribbon is a piece of what I am using (giving away) for my Candy With A Catch Challenge. The bottom ribbon and the Teal ribbons are from my Ribbon Outlet Field Trip, and the purple is SU Eggplant.

Recipe for all of the above cards: Stamps - Friendly Flowers, One of a Kind; Paper - Taken With Teal, Lovely Lilac, Whisper White; Ink - Teal and Lilac markers, Versamark; Other - Boho Blossoms punch, Ticket Corner punch, purple Stickles, Eggplant gg ribbon, Offray Outlet ribbon, Rhinestone brads, Horizontal Slot punch.

These next two cards are (obviously) Birthday cards. I used the SU Afternoon Tea DS papers, which I love, love, love! The idea for using strips of many coordinating papers together came from Nichole Heady's blog entry.

This one is the more feminine of the two, and will be for one of my customers who has an April birthday. I used more of the flowery sides of the papers for her card.

Can you tell I am totally enamored with the layered ribbon idea? The brown satin is from the Theater Ribbon Originals.

The sentiment is from one of the SU Simply Sent kits.

This is the more masculine version of the same card. I used more of the stripes and patterns, and mostly skipped the froo-froo patterns.

These two cards came together fairly quickly. And if I had not already used the Afternoon Tea papers in my last two workshops, I'd put this one in my lineup and have everyone make this card next month. Of course I'd have them cut their own strips of paper, since that is a lot of cutting, and I might go postal or something if I had to do all of them for the kits. ;-)

Recipe for the above two cards: Stamps - from the Three Thoughts Simply Sent Kit; Paper - Soft Sky, Whisper White, Groovy Guava, Afternoon Tea DS paper; Ink - Groovy Guava; Other - Ticket Corner punch, Theater Ribbon Originals, Groovy Guava double-stitched ribbon, white gel pen.

That's all for now. I am supposed to be making something in the starch category for tonight's Pot Luck dinner, and I have not even been to the store yet. Guess I'd better get my rear in gear and get moving. I really do have big plans to use those shaving-creamed papers some time soon. If I do not, I'll have to put away all the lovely Red, White & Blue ribbon, and heaven knows I do not want to do that!