Papertrey January 2012 Blog Hop

Well, it's been awhile since I've been able to participate in a Papertrey blog hop...and I'm barely fitting it in today! Wow, it sure is hard to find the time to do all the things I want to do in life. I find myself combining challenges all the time to try to kill two birds with one stone.

The challenge today is to post a favorite project from 2011 and then make something new that is inspired by the previous one. When I read that assignment, I immediately thought of the following card I made last year:



I loved the way this one turned out...I made it as part of another PTI challenge to use buttons on a card. I had this really fun resist paper from Stampin' Up that I used to ink up in various colors and add the coordinating butterflies.

So today, I wanted to use the same resist paper, and I wanted to use the Love Birds stamp set because of the sentiment, "Nothing's the same when you're gone"...my husband is leaving tomorrow for two weeks for a mission trip to Africa and I'm not looking forward to him being gone so far away for so long...hence the card to put into his luggage.

My hubby got me a Copic Airbrush system for Christmas, and I haven't had much time to play with it, so I thought I'd pull it out and see if it works on this resist paper. I found out that using the system is going to take some practice. It doesn't entirely create the effect I was going for because it doesn't go on "hard" enough to make the resist stand out. This whole card was an exercise in trial & error. I'm not entirely thrilled with the way it turned out, but when that happens, I try to chalk it up as a learning experience rather than feeling like I wasted my precious crafting time by making something that didn't turn out as well as I'd envisioned in my head.

Adding...in case you're wondering what the little blue blobs are next to the little bird cages, those are supposed to be the little hearts emanating from the birds...(that stamp is also in the Love Birds set)...they don't show up in the way that I'd like them to, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do to them to make them stand out more...I tried glitter pens, going over them with markers, tossed around the idea of adding glitter glue (but then they'd really look like blobs...those little hearts aren't a defined-enough heart shape), tried stamping on separate paper and popping them up with foam tape (too hard to cut them out and make them look good, they are too small), punching out different little hearts to layer over those (all my punches & dies were too big), stamping over them and adding embossing powder...everything....in the end I gave up because I had run out of time and nothing had worked. So they just look like little blue blobs. Oh well. ;)

Allrighty then, enough blabbing...here's today's card, a somewhat of a spin-off from my previous card...



On another note, I'm using a brand new camera for which I haven't had the time to read the manual to figure out how it works, so I'm not entirely excited about how the photo turned out either...but hey, just more learning curve going on there! :)

Supply list:

Cardstock: Smokey Shadow (PTI);
Patterned Paper: Presto Patterns Specialty DSP (SU)
Stamp Set(s): Love Birds (PTI)
Ink/Colorants: Black, Moonstruck, Grey Wool (CTMH); Copic Markers B91, B93, B95, B97; Broken China, Faded Denim Distress Inks
Embellishments: Black grosgrain ribbon, Rhinestones (CTMH)
Tools: Ribbon Tags 2 die (Spellbinders); Love Birds bird cage die (PTI)