Channeling My Inner Lauren

[If you're looking for today's SOS post, please scroll down or click here.]

Channeling my inner Lauren. Who am I kidding? My bloggy pal and fellow SOS-er Lauren is the Queen of Fussy. That woman can put eleventy squillion things on one card and have it look good. Me? Not so much. So when I saw that the current *checks date and time ... yep, still current* challenge over at the Jingle Belles blog was to be inspired by their blog header:

I knew the header had been designed by Lauren (read: not my style), but I still wanted to play. I saw pink and purple and silver and shiny. Not going near two of those, so I tried to channel my inner Lauren, and made this:

I started with a piece of paper from my My Mind's Eye Signature Christmas pack. Then a funny thing happened.

You see, I'm in the midst of a big purge. I told myself that after the move, anything that wasn't unpacked by July was getting sold at my friend's August Yard Sale. This included all things crafty. I've actually bagged and tagged all of it, even.

Why am I telling you this? Because there are two items on this card that had to be retrieved from the For Sale pile and used. One is/are those flowers. They came in a tin from Mike's, and it's wedding confetti. I have two tins of them: one white and one cream, and I used the cream flowers here.

The other item is that ribbon. It's old, very old. As in: I got it in a trip to the Offray Ribbon Outlet back in 2008. Here is my trip report for that day. Anyway, it's very stiff, and even though I put it on Sookwang permanent tape, it still doesn't stick to the paper. NOW I see why Lauren sews things onto her cards. Unfortunately my sewing machine was put away and I was too lazy to take it out. So instead I had to think of ways to secure the ribbon to the card.

On the left, the brads in the flowers hold it down well, On the right, I was forced to poke holes and sew it. Here's a detail shot of the Jingle letters, and you can see the stitching on the right:

The stitches are under the 'e' and are done with May Arts ivory burlap twine. It's a little fuzzy.

Now, about those letters. I so rarely use glitter paper, but I felt it was time to pull out some old SU red glitter paper and die-cut the letters. I think Lauren would use glitter letters, and this was all about my inner Lauren, right? :)

To get the letters to stick to the defiant lace, I think I really should have sewn them, but it looked like a LOT of work, and I liked the letters un-marred, so I used some multi medium and smooshed on enough that it fills in some of the spaces in the lace. The letters still moved around when I bumped them, so I straightened them one last time and put a 5-pound brick on top of them, then went to bed.

This morning they were stuck! And not to the brick! I still don't trust them to stay, but I have lots of time to deal with the little buggers between now and Christmas, don't I? :D

I thought the border looked dull, so I added some gelly pen faux stitches. It's shiny and looks wet, even though it's not.

As my penultimate (next to the last - I love that word!) act, I found my stash of bells and sewed them on to the bottom of the 'g' with some crochet thread before I stuck the whole panel to a card base.

For my last act, I added Wink of Stella to the flowers and brads so they sparkle, too. :)

I can't believe I pulled this off. This is sooooo not a typical Leslie card, but it sure was fun to make!

Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used: SU template to punch the holes where I stitched the ribbon down, misc lace ribbon, table confetti from Mike's wedding section, Pink Hedgehog cream brads, SU red glitter paper, bells. crochet thread, Sakura glaze pens - Brilliant set, and the following:

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