Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The Best-Laid Plans ...

When I saw the current sketch at Retro Sketches:

I immediately thought this would be a great sketch to use to disappear another 6x6 pad of paper and make a bazillion cards for OWH. I saw the three sections at the top as two strips of paper: a short one on top of a longer one.

I was so excited I pulled out my Basic Grey Hello Luscious 6x6 pad that only had a few papers used, and cut it - THE WHOLE THING ... EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. ... into 2" strips. Then I paired up the strips. I'll get into more detail in another post, but I wanted to show you a corner into which I've managed to paint myself.

First, here is one of the cards:


Kinda boring (and blurry), huh? The corners on this floral piece are rounded, since the first few I did with squared corners were even less appealing. But there's still something not right, right? In hindsight, I should have layered the pieces with black, but noooooo, I'd already stuck them all to the card fronts. DUMB. Make your prototype first, people!!!

So then I tried a trick one of my pals, Linda, showed us on her SOS blog post last week. I took some black twine, wet it with some Claudine Hellmuth Multi Medium, then carefully laid it around the floral piece. The glue dries clear, and you end up with a stiff and stuck-down black border. I finished it off with a bow and got this:

Better. It definitely needed the contrast.

That's one. I have 50+ more to go:

What would YOU do? I don't think my hand is steady enough to draw a black line around the smaller pieces. Maybe some faux stitching in black (that doesn't need to be quite so straight)? Any other ideas? I might have to spend my weekend waiting for twine to dry. :(

Thanks for stopping by.

Products used:
Basic Grey Hello Luscious 6x6 paper pack
Simon Says Stamp For The Record (also available with matching dies)
Hero Hues black ink (EH)
May Arts black twine string burlap (SSS)
Claudine Hellmuth Multi Medium, Matte 4 oz (SSS|EH) 1/2 oz (SSS|EH)
clearbags.com linen note cards (I buy these in quantities of 250 for the lower price)
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 16, 2013 at 4:17 AM

    L - could you cut a slender strip of black cs to run along the top and bottom of the whole strip? I know it wouldn't highlight the middle piece, but it might be enough contrast to work. The other thought I had was to get one of those teeny tiny smudgers and your black ink (soot, maybe?) and smudge the edges of the center piece, carefully. Lastly, could you use black stickles to outline your center piece and let dry (a long time)?
    HTH
    Zanne

    ReplyDelete
  2. CarlaKHJanuary 16, 2013 at 6:57 AM

    You could use a border punch in black at the bottom of the strips or narrow black ribbon (probably NOT fun to punch 50 border strips) or emboss some black cardstock and cut it into narrow strips for under the colors....

    ReplyDelete
  3. MSJanuary 16, 2013 at 11:58 AM

    Ohh, love that paper pad! I like the faux stitching idea, or the 2 thin strips of black CS. Super helpful I am :/

    ReplyDelete

I'd love to hear what you really think! :-)

PS: I've had to disable Anonymous comments, because the spammers were killing me. If you are unable to comment, please email me your comment and I'll get it posted for you. Sorry. (stoopid spammers)

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