Two Special Requests

Last weekend I had two requests for cards I didn't have. I generally just make what I like, or what I feel like making, and I've learned several things over the years. (1) You won't always have what they want, (2) If you make what they ask for, they won't always come back and buy it, (3) If you want to be sure they'll buy it, get a deposit, (4) Even that doesn't always work, and (5) You can't please everyone.

But once in a while, when the "do you have" jives with something on my mental back burner, I go for it. In the first case, a couple was looking for golf-themed birthday cards. They collect them and send them out to their golfer friends. They said they'd be back to check this week. No pressure.

I have made some golf cards in the past, but they took forEVER to sell, so I was in no rush to make more. But since I have the stamps, I said I'd try.

This is the golf card I came up with last night:

The sky is a Hero Arts stamp, and all the rest of the images are from A Muse. I stamped the sky first, and this caused an immediate problem: the blue showed through the golfer's arms, and on the second one I made he has a blue face. Boo. Hopefully no one will notice, or care. I went over his shirt with a white gel pen and covered up most of the blue. I also went over the tree with a marker to keep the clouds from showing through that, too. Ugh, the things we do for our art.

Now I know enough about golf to know it wouldn't be a good idea to have grass all over that green strip, because it would mean the golfer was in the rough, and that's not a good thing. But the piece looked nekkid without any grass, so I put it near the bottom so it still looks like he's on a fairway.

The golf ball is an SU pearl. I love that they come in so many different sizes on the same sheet. I think this one was the second-largest one. Oh, and the leaves on the tree are actually green, and if I could take a better photo, you might be able to see that. ;/

Second: a guitar card. One of the other craft vendors asked if I had anything with a guitar on it. Well, I have a stamp set with a guitar stamp in it. I got it from one of my tweeps and I had yet to use it. This idea was bubbling in the back of my brain:


The guitar is from the retired SU set Jazzed Up. The background is an unmounted stamp I got recently from ... I don't remember where. I stamped it with Crumb Cake onto Very Vanilla card stock. I like how subtle it came out. I know I have a "You Rock" stamp somewhere, but honestly, it was faster to just print something. My only boo boo was printing it on white, because the rest of the card is vanilla, so I sponged it with Crumb Cake ink. I think it just looks dirty now, but it was late, and I was tired, so I went with it. I free-hand cut out the sentiment.

The layer is Cherry Cobbler, because I wanted to add some color to an otherwise blah color scheme. WAIT! I could call it "monochromatic". :)

I'll let you know if either of them buys the one card I made in each theme. I tried.

Thanks for stopping by!