Evergreen ... and another Watercolor Winter

Happy Tuesday!

Wow.  Tamara's Paper Trail is right!  I've been doing paperwork ever since 8:30 this morning!  It's AWESOME when SU puts out a great promotion that boosts sales but the paper tornado it leaves behind is incredible!  Yes, I'm one of the people who LOVES paperwork ... but not when I still have about 15 projects to work on and Christmas approaching!!  Nevertheless I'm making my way through it ... only about another 3 hours at the computer and 4 in the craft room and I should be caught up ... (ya, right ... like THAT day ever comes *lol*)

Sooo ... before I start my 2 hours stint of sending my magazine project "recipes" to HO I thought I could procrastinate just a little longer by sharing a few more projects with you (I TOLD you I've made about 25 projects in the last 3 weeks!!!)

First up is one I more or less CASE'd from the fabulous Dawn Olchefske ... www. dostamping.typepad.com.  Here is Dawn's card:

Beautiful!  I just love the card ... AND the layout ... but wanted to simplify it a bit for my Stamp-a-Stack a few weeks back.  Here is what I came up with:

Hmmm ... looks a little squished here ... gotta master that new camera!  I just LOVED how this one turned out.  Yep ... THIS was what we would make.  Oh!  Wait!  No we won't!  Instead of having 2 full rolls of Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding, like I THOUGHT I had I only had enough to make TWO cards!  Arghhhh!!!  I HATE when that happens!  I am a borderline hoarder and HATE the thought of ever running out of something so I ALWAYS have back-up supplies ... not this time!  I obviously USED all my favorite ribon and neglected to replenish it!  Sigh.  Well!  I needed to change it (much to my shegrin ... shegrin ... how do you spell shegrin?  And what dies that MEAN anyway??  Note to self:  Ask Dad what shegrin means and how to spell it ...).  After an hour of mixing an matching colors ... and making sure I had ENOUGH of everything this is what I came up with:

Old Olive 5/8" satin ribbon (retired) to the rescue!  Oh look!  The ribbon slid down when I took it out of the sleeve - *lol*  nice one, Tam!  I used the same layout as Dawn ... but I left the background blank (in very vanilla).  I popped the Always Artichoke layer up on dimensionals so I could slide the Old Olive ribbon underneath it.  The little squares 1 1/4" squares are also popped up.  I used Watercolor Winter AGAIN - stamped in Staz-on and colored with my blender pen with the Old Olive, Always Artichoke and Cherry Cobbler inks.  The Peac on Earth is in Cobbler and hiding under the ribbon is a string of 5 rhinestones.  Wa-low!  A pretty card!

Now ... on to the card I hate ... well, maybe hate is a bit strong ... and there IS too much hate in the world already ... so let's go with strongly dislike ... or maybe just "dislike enough to not want to show it".  It's just dull ... and lacks something ... maybe some rhinestones would perk it up a bit ... but I gave up on it before I even hit that point.  Here it is ...

Blech (is that how you spell a wretching noise *lol*?)  BO-RING!  I used my labels collection framelits (LOVE THEM!!) for an Artichoke mat - stamped the tree from Evergreen in ... umm ... Celery? ... and then the writing in Artichoke overtop.  The sentiment is from More Merry Messages (on sale for 1 more day!!).  I say again.  Blech.

Now ... FINALLY ... an Evergreen card I actually LIKE!!!  Here ya go!

Ta Da!  Can you tell I"m really into minimalist lately?  I've come to terms with a lot of white space!!  This card is just PERFECT for my Stamp-a-Stack on Sunday where most of the stampers are young ladies ... my rule of thumb for THAT market is ONE INK COLOR!!  This one fits!  I used Night of Navy - inked the tree once but stamped it 3 times so each tree is lighter.  The sentiment is from Greetings of the Season and also in Night of Navy.  It's hard to see but the tree on the left was stamped in our (retired) silver Encore ink - stamped off - and then lightly stamped on the tree.  Since the ink is quite "wet" there is time to apply a little Dazzling Diamonds to it and it sticks :)  A few rhinestones and we're done!

Soooooooooooo - that brings me up to date on my postings!  Woo Hoo!  Thanks for hanging in there and reading all my ramblings :))

I WANT to work on a Christmas Envelope Gift Card Holder for you for tomorrow but we'll have to see how this paperwork ... oh, and magazine project recipe ... gig goes first.  I guess at SOME point I'm going to have to make that a priority .... and maybe THAN I can get a decent night sleep *lol*

Thanks for popping by.  Have a stampy day :)


Tam