Gingham Happy Birthday

I spent Saturday at a crop to benefit a friend's daughter's school band. I can't believe schools today have bands (or any extra-curricular activities, really), but don't fund them. I think that in order to have well-rounded kids, you need to have non-book-based activities, and it just seems wrong to me that it's now so difficult for everyone to participate. So I had NO PROBLEM going and buying a bazillion raffle tickets to try to win some of the yummy prizes, but more on that another time.

For now let's just talk about how I sat at a large table with several crafty friends and stared at card stock all day. No, really, it took me HOURS to make one card. I'll share a few of them with you over the next week and include the Lessons Learned with each one. I had LOTS of time to think and stare and chew my nails.

This card started out completely different(ly) than it ended up. Here's the card, then I'll explain:

This started out with a strip of gold chevrons where I now have the stamped black gingham. The red circles* just didn't work with the gold, even without the home-made enamel dots. The gold chevrons + peach/red were for my attempt at the Just Add Ink challenge:

See? Gold chevrons and pink. It's probably the (gah) pink that messed me up. :)  I was following this layout from Clean & Simple:

I started over with the vertical element of the sketch, and stamped the Paper Smooches gingham/checked image in black, and decided it looked a LOT better than the gold. Plus, it let me add some of my home-made enamel dots:

I've read about these, but when my bloggy pal Jackie made some of her own, I knew I needed to try it myself. Why? I don't know, because it's not like I NEED more enamel dots. I think this goes back to my story about how I belong to the confused generation - caught between parents of the Depression who saved everything and made all their own stuff, and the current disposable mentality of "just buy a new one". I want to make my own, even though I don't need them. See: confused.

ANYway, I bought some beads and made some of my own dots, and I loved the striped ones! I took them with me to the crop to see if I could use some, so I call that effort a success. :)

Jackie also has some follow-up posts on her experimenting here and here. You should check them out. I love when my pals do all the research and experimenting for the rest of us. :)

I'll share some more crop-day creations later. Right now I need to go spread out some mulch. I had 20 bags delivered yesterday (local High School football team fund-raiser ... there it is, again). The nice guys even placed the bags along the beds so I don't need to haul them myself. BONUS!

Thanks for stopping by!

*The red/pink card stock was made by rubbing Fresh Peach ink onto white card stock. It's all I had with me, and I like how it came out. :)

Products used: Home-made enamel dots made from Perler beads, SU black card stock, and the following:

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