Inspired by Lynnette in the Lawnscaping Challenge #74

Last night I was just puttering in my craft room waiting for the hockey game to start, so I pulled up my Pinterest card layout board and quickly found a cute card using the new Lawn Fawn set I picked up called Love You Tons.  I quickly stamped the cute little elephants in VersaFine ink and heat embossed them.  Then I colored them with my Spectrum Noir markers and cut them out using the matching dies.  I found the heart bubble in the Lawn Fawn Into the Woods set and inked it with some ColorBox chalk ink in Warm Red.  I fussy cut the speech bubble (is it really speech if it's an emotion?).

The inspiration pin has what appears to be a hand stamped background with the little heart in the set but I am NOT patient enough to do that.  But I found some cute paper from the 6x6 pad from Pink Paislee called Secret Crush.  After debating far too long about what side of the paper to cut from (left? right? left? right it is), I stamped the sentiment in the VersaFine ink and added my elephants and bubble with some pop dots. But, it needed something.  I swiped some white Wink of Stella on the heart, stared at the card for far too long before deciding to add some clear Wink of Stella to the red in the bubble.  Done.

I picked out a pretty red card base from my rainbow stash, taped down my top panel then added a simple panel inside with a heart form the Lawn Fawn set Bee Mine in my red chalk ink on the inside.  Done and done.

So the only thing I left to do was find who posted my inspiration card so I could give credit where credit is due - to my surprise, when I scanned the cards posted for the Lawnscaping Challenge that I pinned it from, I discovered it was Lynnette of Netter's Notables again.  Inspiring twice in a week? I would say this must mean I really like her style.

Butterfly Card

There is one thing about Pinterest that really frustrates me:  when people pin things such that I cannot find the original source.  Sometimes this is because the person making the pin doesn't understand how Pinterest works.  The person is reading a blog and sees something she likes.  She pins it not realizing that you have to pin from the specific entry, otherwise Pinterest will simply take me back to the most recent post of the blog.  Then I have to sort through all the entries to find the one that is really for the item that caught my attention.  Sometimes, however, I cannot access the original source because I simply don't have access.  The Stampin' Connection is a good example.  I cannot log in to see the sources, but I can see the pictures on Pinterest.  Sometimes the artist is smart and leaves me a breadcrumb in the form of a watermark that at least lets me know who I can give credit to for the inspiration.  That's the case here.  I loved this butterfly card I saw on Pinterest.  Of course, it was a Stampin' Connection link so I could see where it had been pinned from.  But the watermark is from Carrie Gaskin, the Artistic Avenger.  She stopped blogging in October last year and some of the pictures on her blog simply would not load for me, so I couldn't find if she had posted on her blog about it.  It was really kind of a shame too because from the few pictures I did get to load, I can tell I would have found even more inspiration.

The only paper on here that wasn't from my scraps bin is the green pattern paper peeking in the background.  It's from the 6x6 pad called For the Record 2 by Echo Park and designed by Lori Whitlock.  The butterflies were cut on my Cameo using the Echo Park butterfly design.  I cut out only the base and then inked them with various shades of Distress Ink.  I used a french curve to draw the butterfly path and then poked the holes with my stylus and my Stampin' Up paper piercer template to make sure the path remained reasonably evenly spaced.  I finished it off with Hemptique baker's twine instead of ribbon and some glossy accents down the middle of each butterfly. 

I've left off the sentiment on this one because I'm not quite sure what I want to use it for.  I think it could do well as a birthday card, a sympathy card or even just a thinking of you card.  So for now, I'll leave those possibilities open.   

 

Rainbow Birthday Wishes

I absolutely loved this card I found via Pinterest from SplitCoast Stampers from Yours Truly.  She tells the story of having to rescue the rainbow from her card when she messed up stamping the sentiment (now who hasn't done that before?), but I think her "rescue" turned out amazing and I just had to try it for myself.  I used seven shades of Distress Ink and a lot of post-it notes for masking.  I love how it turned out with the Darice rainbow studs sprinkled on it.  The sentiment is from that Inkadinkado Garden Flowers stamp set.  It's funny how many stamps sets I have with sentiments, but I find there are several that I use all the time:  this one and the Fiskars All Occasions set are probably the most used sets I own.  I added a few more studs and little dot of Stardust Stickles to finish it off.  Quick, easy and adorable!