Thursday, September 24, 2009

Flight of Fancy

Don't you just love it when a card comes together just as you've imagined it?! It seldom works like that for me - I start out in one direction, but then I end up in a totally different place (not that it's a bad thing, but still...)

Anyway, I wanted to play along with a couple challenges this week, namely the sketch over at Mojo Monday, and the "Shaby Chic" theme over at Daring Cardmakers. I wanted to use the Cloud Dancer set, and I was also thinking that the focal diamond would be a great way to incorporate a bookmark (always fun to have a giftie built right into the card!). I started by creating the bookmark* then stamped the darling fairy, colored her, and accented the wings with a glitter pen. I mounted the bookmark to the other square by gluing only the bottom of white square (roughly the size of the bookmark) to the patterned piece, and then slipping the bookmark over it.

The papers are all from the BasicGrey Wisteria pad, and the lace was something I've had in my stash for years (I remember using this to accent a mop doll I made for my Mom back in junior high!) I strayed a bit from the Mojo sketch by only using the lace as opposed to scalloped layers, but I didn't want to detract from the main panel. A few flowers and pearls, and it was done!

One other comment - after this was all completed, I managed to smear a tiny bit of ink onto the bookmark. I wasn't about to start over, but I didn't want to glue anything onto it, either (wanted to keep it flat for use in a book). I covered the smudge with a white gel pen, and then proceeded to do a bit of tiny swirly doodling all over the background around the girl. I then did the exact same thing with a pale colored pencil just to break up the white a bit more. What started as a mistake ended up being a design element!

*I know there are a couple different ways to make these - I simply started with a square piece of cardstock, then found the center on one side and brought the two edges together to create a folded point (so it sort of looked like a little house at that point), and then trimmed off the excess. Thanks to Sandy, our local stamping librarian, for reminding me about these!

2 comments:

PetraB said...

Hallo Trish, you definitely captured the 'shabby' moment and what an excellent idea to incorporate a little gift into your card design. And if you would not have mentioned the bookmark desaster, I would have never guessed that the doodling was not in the plan :-) it looks great.
Petra.

Kathy said...

Lovely card, Trish - such pretty colours you've chosen to use. Thanks for joining in with the Daring Caardmakers