Palm Tree Thanks

Did you ever get stuck on an idea and even though it just isn’t working the way you envisioned it, you spend way too much time trying and trying?  I can be very stubborn and have been known to do this… a lot!  That’s what happened with this card.  My husband needed to send a thank you note to a friend he recently saw in Florida, and my daughter loves palm trees and needed some notes for her birthday which is coming up next week.  My original idea was to use the chalkboard technique to make a card using the palm tree stamp with the “Thanks” as the trunk.  (I was trying to avoid a realistic scene with a lot of sponging and coloring since I needed to make a number of these thank you notes, and I really wanted to use the wavy paper I just got on clearance at AC Moore.)

Here is my first attempt:

It wasn’t bad, but I felt like it needed something more on the “chalkboard” panel, and in trying to make multiple copies, I just kept making a mess.  (I hate using pigment inks!)

I finally gave up on the chalkboard idea and the palm trees and tried to work around the wavy paper. Here is my second attempt:

I actually really liked this design with the “Many Thanks” stamp (Gina K Designs “Lots of Lines” set) and was happy with the ease with which I could duplicate it.  However, my husband and daughter seemed to like the palm tree idea better.  So….

I ended up combining the two ideas and used the sponging and inking idea from the second card with the palm tree and greeting idea from the first card and ended up with my final project:

A lot of time and wasted paper, but I am happy with the way it came out.  I guess it’s not so bad to be a stubborn crafter!  (Sometimes it just takes me a while to get to the end of the process!!)

The “thanks” stamp is from the Gina K Designs “Vertical Greetings” set, and the palm trees are by Recollections.  I created a mask to sponge the background and used Gina K turquoise sea and Tim Holtz pine needles distress inks.  The images were stamped with Memento tuxedo black ink.  The wavy paper is by Crate Paper called Poolside from the Pier Collection.  Gina K turquoise sea, black and white card stock was also used. I used my stamp-a-ma-jig and a mask to put the greeting where the trunk should have been, and these (along with the background mask) made it easy to make multiple copies of this layout.

Thanks for checking out my card project!

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