Thinking of You

The Mod Squad Challenge this week is to create a card of encouragement.   (Sadly, this site is no longer active.)  I find that knowing friends are thinking of me when I am going through a rough time or am not feeling well is encouraging and helps me to feel better. This card was made for a friend who has not been feeling well, and we are hoping he feels better soon!

I started out this card with a Gina K Edible Eggplant card base and a piece of card stock cut from the Heartfelt Creations Antiquitiy Collection 12×12 paper pad.  The stamps I used are from the Gina K Designs “Little Branches” set (for the sentiment) and the Heartfelt Creations “Recovery Wishes” set (for the floral image).  They were both stamped with Gina K Edible Eggplant ink.  I use Copic Markers YG93 and YG95 and Lavender Flower Soft to add color to the floral image.  The flower soft was a little light for my edible eggplant card base, so I tapped the side of the brush nib of my Copic Marker V99 onto the flower soft (in random places) to make parts of it darker.  Once my images were stamped and colored, I used dies from the Spellbinders A2 Matting Basics A and B sets to cut out the focal image panel and frame. (The focal image panel is smaller than the cut-out frame so you can see some of the card base between the two.)

Seems simple enough, right?  It never is!!  Initially, I thought I’d do this kind of like triple stamping (but with only 2 layers and with the patterned paper instead of stamping by own background paper).  I stamped my images as described above and cut out the image panel with one of the dies.  Then I used the other die to cut out an edible eggplant mat.  I lined up the patterns on the printed paper and adhered the layers.  Then I proceeded to mess up my leaves when I colored them.  I tried it again and again several times and just couldn’t get them right.  (I have no idea what my problem was; they are just simple leaves!!)  Anyway, I kept using different corners of the two sheets of this paper that came in the pad (that was where the pattern was I wanted to use) and eventually ran out of corners/paper.  I ended up using a piece more in the middle of the page which had a lot less detail.  Here is my “double stamped” sample with the plainer paper panel.   (You can see that the pattern lines up on this sample.)

I liked this, but when I looked at it next to the messed up versions that had a little more detail in the print, this seemed a little plain to me.  I tried to salvage parts of some of the messed up cards by removing the image panels and was left with the cut-out frame and a lot of the eggplant.  I happened to see a scrap of the paper with the postage image sitting on my desk and tried stamping my images on that. I really liked this, but the scrap was smaller than the original panel so I couldn’t mat it like I had before. I tried centering it in the opening of the frame and ended up with the first card pictured above. Had I started with this idea from the beginning, my patterns would have lined up, but I was using scraps and panels cut separately so the patterns are different.  I’m still really happy with the end result, and I actually like the plain version a lot more as well now that it’s not side by side with the other ones!

Thanks for checking out my card project!

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