Monday, May 4, 2015

One-Layer Blossom

I made a one-layer card. I DID! I have the pleasure of living within spitting distance of the lovely Susan Raihala, and we do lunch on occasion, talk stampy stuff, blogs, challenges, and general life. It's so fun to get together with fellow stampy peeps. In addition to being crazy talented in the minimalist realm, she has a killer reading list, and now so do I. #win

So, one of the things we've discussed is the definition of one-layer. I am the person to forever challenge this definition, since I almost always work on a separate 4x5.25 panel that gets adhered in some fashion to a card base. I can probably get past that, but when I work on water color paper, it's an A2 piece of paper that then ... gets stuck to a card base. But this is not the purist's sense of a one-layer card, and I have yet to find the intestinal fortitude to cut up an 8.5x11 piece of water color paper and only use the front.*

Until yesterday. I had a crafty play date, and we were told to bring NOTHING with us, or at least very, very little. Well, pffth, that's not going to happen, but I did scale way back and only brought my new stamps and dies, and some foil, and some heavy-weight vellum, and some 8.5x11 water color paper. It was a skeletal plan, but I actually made two cards. Yep, two. All day.

So, the current One-Layer Simplicity Challenge is Blossom. I opened my 8.5x11 Hero Arts water color paper pack, cut a piece in half, and rummaged through my pal's collection of floral stamps. This is what came out:


It's not exactly what I'd planned, but it's close. Apparently my detail water brush is a little fatter than I thought, or my hand is way less steady than I thought, or both, because I colored outside the lines of the stem. Oh, wait, I meant to do that. Yeah, I went back and outlined the whole thing with Tumbled Glass.

This was so easy to make! I just stamped the image repeatedly, thanks to my MISTI, with Archival Jet Black ink, smooshed a few mini Distress inks onto my craft mat, spritzed them with water, and used my empty too-fat detail water brush to apply the color to the image.  Too easy, really.

Yes, I'm still itchy with the whole base being water color paper, but I DID IT! Phew, way outside of my comfort zone, too. But then, that's what a challenge is all about, right? :)

Thanks for stopping by!

*My pal suggested I could maybe get past the "use only the front" conundrum by purposely water coloring over the fold and onto the back, or even on the inside. THIS, people, is why hanging with fellow stampy peeps is good for the soul.

Stuff I used: Hero Arts water color paper, The Craft's Meow Hope Blooms stamp set, and the following:



8 comments:

  1. This is so pretty and so clean and bright.

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  2. Lovely CAS design, simple elegance! Great job!

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  3. Oh I'm so proud of you stepping so far outside your comfort zone. Your card did come out super lovely. So maybe you won't be so fearful next time. LOL Have a nice day.

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  4. What a CAS beauty! Congrats on stepping outside your comfort zone and doing the one layer. I had a hard time with that myself but since I joined a DT where we HAVE to make a one layer it has now become quite easy to do. In fact, now I have to remind myself that I don't have to make EVERY card a one layer. LOL! Anyway, love the card! It's awesome. :-)

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  5. Excellente! I knew you could do it! What a lovely card, and I so admire your perfect outlining with tumbled glass...every time I try, it looks so weird!

    And remember, if you make a one-layer card and screw it up, just cut the back off and use that when you layer. Easy! That's where all my white-on-white layers come from...the leftovers of failed one-layer cards.

    I'm so happy we're practically neighbors!

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  6. Fabulous! You did it! So pretty.

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  7. Part of me wants to screech that you wasted a whole piece of water color paper on the card base, but that's just the evil naughty part who likes to see you twitch. This is a great card and it would make me twitch to do it too... for more than the type of paper.

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  8. Making a one-layer card out of watercolour paper makes me itchy, too. Even though this gorgeous card could _almost_ convince me.

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

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