Today's color scheme: Concord Crush (card base), Pretty in Pink, Vanilla
OK, I will admit to not being totally thrilled how this card turned out. My excuse is having my eye on the clock so as not to be a late to my volunteer work. Another excuse: There are days where your mojo refuses to show up on the scene. My mojo must be down at the local Hapuna Beach taking in some rays. 
Ooooh, I am really loving the SU! Concord Crush paper. Here you see it teamed up with SU!'s Lap of Luxury DSP (Basic Gray, Concord Crush, Vanilla, and Pretty in Pink color combo). I will be playing around more with SU!'s Lap of Luxury DSP as time permits and inspiration occurs. What I have discovered—horrors of horrors—is I have zip, nadda, not a inch of Basic Gray card stock! Now how in the world did that occur considering how many colors of the rainbow I have in my card stock stash?
The card's sentiment (SU!'s Fabulous Phrases) and flower (Friends Never Fade) were stamped using Concord Crush ink. Three pearls were added as embellishments along side the stamped flower. A rectangle strip of Pretty in Pink paper was embossed using SU!'s swiss dot embossing folder to go along with the DSP dot motif. SU!'s Scallop Trim punch was used to create a scallop edge on a leftover piece of Concord Crush paper.
StampTVs Tuesday sketch challenge was the inspiration for today's card layout. 
Stamp sets: Fabulous Phrases, Friends Never Fade
Paper: Concord Crush, Pretty in Pink, Lap of Luxury DSP
Embellishments: Basic Pearls
Punch: Scallop Trim
Sizzix: Swiss Dot embossing folder
What's black and white? My card! A card challenge at StampTV called for a black and white card. It certainly is hard to restrain oneself from sneaking in some color like…yellow…red…or even some green! I did use SU!'s Going Gray (retired) paper for the card's inside. I have LOTS of Going Gray paper and decided I would put some to good use.
See the black eyelets at the bottom of the card? I used two indispensable SU! tools to get the five eyelets evenly spaced horizontally and vertically: SU!'s Mat Pack and the Crop-a-Dile. The Mat Pack helped me figure out the eyelet spacing and the Crop-A-Dile was used to punch the eyelet openings at the same depth each time. The Crop-A-Dile also made it a 'snap' to add the 3/16" non-SU! black eyelets to the card's front panel. A girl and her tools!
A little trick I learned for stamping a background stamp is to use an old phone book. Just open the book, place your card stock on top of an open page, and firmly press the background stamp down on the card stock. You'll have an evenly stamped background without any tears or fuss! The background stamp set I used was SU!'s long retired Antique Crackling background stamp.
The other stamp set used today is also a long ago retired SU! stamp set called Autumn. The Antique Crackling and Autumn stamp sets are 'keepers' for me.
Today's color scheme? The main color theme is Orchid Opulence (card base), Pretty in Pink, So Saffron, Certainly Celery, Shades of Spring (DSP). The accent colors are Perfect Plum and More Mustard which were used for the two-step stamping process.
I tried taking on StampTV's latest sketch challenge since it did not look overly difficult. The difficulty came in to play when I got the idea to cut out the stamped flower images. Why it takes me forever to cut something out is the question for the day!
Today's card features SU!'s Greenhouse Garden stamp set (113824 – normally $25.95) that's on special for 20% off through April 30th. This is a versatile stamp set to own and fun one too for the two-step stamping. That is stamp the main image on paper and then its partnering outline image in a slightly darker ink over the top. I used my stamp-a-ma-jig to help make the two-step stamping a breeze.
I stamped the largest flower from the stamp set with So Saffron ink on Whisper White paper. The outline image was stamped with More Mustard ink. The stamped image was punched out with SU!'s 1 3/4" punch and layered on a Orchid Opulence 2" circle. The 2" circle and larger white circle were made using my Big Shot Circles #2 BigZ die (114526). The center flowers (and cut out) were stamped on Whisper White paper with Orchid Opulence ink and outlined with Perfect Plum ink. The flower stems were stamped with Certainly Celery ink and outlined with Always Artichoke ink. The card was completed with some Certainly Celery 3/4" Ribbon.
The bling is non-SU. The bling just happened to be hanging out on my desk top so on a whim I added it for flower centers. The card would have been just fine without the bling. I just could not resist adding a small touch of sparkle to the card.
Oh yes! I did use some SU!'s dimensionals to pop-up the center flower cut-out image.
What has me scratching my head was 'why' I have not used this stamp set sooner! The two-step stamping gives the flowers an almost real look and feel besides being just so darn pretty!
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Tuesday Midnight Madness
