I'm a bit out of my element here; I was admiring Julie Ebersole's blog post a couple of days ago and saw her lovely card and cool sketch challenge. I didn't completely follow it, but it's close! I centered my image rather than offsetting it, and I left off the ribbon. (The ribbon that I tried seemed to detract rather than enhance, so I stamped a narrow band with the dotted stamp instead.)
How about that cool square Fabriano card, eh? I just got those today from Cindy, aka StarLitStudio's e-Bay store! I adore beautiful paper, and this is truly beautiful paper. The envelopes are also a nice texture for painting. Also, I don't know that you can see it well, but I dotted the "i" in "life" with some Amuse creative candy from Ellen Hutson's store. I just love those self-adhesive rhinestones; they find their way onto almost every card that I make these days! A sticky rhinestone is a perfect embellishment on a one-layer card where you don't really want to have the backs of brads showing.
I stamped the Delight in Life Flowers directly onto the card front using paper copies to mask where necessary. For the outside rounded-cornered square, I used the negative shape of a Cricut cut to lightly pencil in borders and watercolored from the outer edge of my borders toward the inside images. (I usually do that just the opposite, softening the outer edge and bleeding out to clean paper there, but I decided that I needed a hard boundary for my image so that I could emphasize the shapes that broke the square.) Finally, when I couldn't get my ribbon to suit me, I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to position the type where I had intended to put the ribbon. I don't get that SAMJ out often, but when I need it, I love it! Everyone who stamps regularly should have one of those Thanks for issuing a challenge, Julie!
