Sweet Pea Baby Cards

Let me begin by saying, "It was an accident." Uh-huh. What a mess. But first, let me show you that I DID eventually make something:

I made eight of these - two each of four different colors, but more on that later.

Let's go back to the mess. Anyone who's been here knows my place looks like a war zone, but that's only because I have too much stuff for the available space. It is NOT because I lack organization. I have boxes that contain bags of things organized by object type: stickers, rub-ons, buttons, etc. All I need to do is take out a bag and I can rummage through it for what I need. See: organized.

But things can still go terribly wrong, like they did last night. Let's look at my project-in-progress:

I took out my bag of pastel buttons, trying different ones to see which I liked better. The ones in the pea are a decent size, but I thought it would be cool to put smaller ones above and below them - like graduated sizes. It is a pea pod after all.

My bag of pastel buttons (the ones in the middle of the pea) live in my accessories drawer. The rest of my button collection - mostly the teeny tiny buttons - live in a bag in a box on a shelf in my closet. See those little buttons? They are from the box in the closet. They are also part of what I call "the button explosion":

Yes, people, all those buttons came out of a little bag from a box in my closet. And to make things more fun, some of the little bags inside the bigger bag were open and all the loose buttons went everywhere. Sigh. Let's look at The Button Stash. Here we have two varieties of Brights:

Obviously, I could never remember I already had these and I kept buying them. I haven't bought any of these for years, but back in the day, I was already forgetting.

Darks and Neutrals:

Muted/Earthy/Country colors:

And the exploded pastels and miscellaneous buttons:

This is the bag of pastels I started with (with which I started):

I took time out from my creating to get little zip-top snack-sized bags and organize all those buttons:

Then they went back into their bigger bag and back into the box and back into the closet. Do you see why everything takes me so long?!?!?!??! Oh, I decided I didn't like the tiny pastel buttons and changed my mind.

Since I'd decide that two of the original buttons would work just fine, I laid out the card parts and spent another 30 minutes trying to decide what ribbon(s) to use. I couldn't match the four colors of PTI paper with PTI ribbon because I had convinced myself I didn't need all the pinks and blues so I didn't buy them all. Sometimes my "I do NOT need that" comes back to bite me.

I thought I'd use white on all of them, because white would work. But white would be boring. So I went in search of some velvet white scallop ribbon to see if that would also be boring, and along the way, I found something even better:

BABY RIBBON! This is one of those ribbons that (so far, at least - I've had it for about 5 years) goes with NOTHING. Well guess what: last night it went with EVERYTHING! YAY! Woo-hoo!!! FINALLY, that $1.99 I spent 5 years ago has been justified. ;/

So here's the layout before anything was stuck down:

... and here are the four finished cards:

Yellow:

Pink:

Green(ish):

... and Blue:

Here's a close-up of the charm:

I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. However, I did not use all the ribbon, or all the charms, or all the polka-dotted paper. Not.even.close. But I have nicely organized buttons in bags in a box in a closet, so there's that.

I have to tell you: even though this baby card project was not in my list of 17 UFOs already on my work table, there's something about an idea that hits the grey matter and comes out the finger tips in one sitting. That creative process pulled me in and I went with it, and it was good! It's like a charge. An adrenaline rush. I can't explain it, but you stampers know of which I speak. It's what keeps me going.

In other (shameless commerce) news, I've updated my ribbon share progress. If you're interested in participating, just email me (link in the left side bar). I've also placed my SU Holiday Mini pre-order (did you hear my credit card screaming yesterday?), so if you need any stamps, please check out my Buy my retired stamps list so they can come live in your house instead of mine. I need to support my habit! Speaking of which, I've also found some more irreverent stamps and was forced (forced, I tell you) into buying them. Coming soon, to a card near you! (I need a 12-step program. )

That's all for tonight. Thanks for stopping by!