Saturday, March 19, 2011

inspired by a table

Hello my friends. I hope you enjoying your weekend. This morning we have frost on the ground - at least it's not snow. But cold, nevertheless. When I checked the temperature, it was less than 30 degrees -- *shiver*.

Last night I made a card for the inspiration challenge on SCS, but it was rather late when I finished, so I waited until this morning to post it. The site had an overwhelming amount of inspiration. There are some wonderful textured decor pieces that I would love to have hanging on my walls. I had a hard time choosing, but finally ended up using one of the samples given by the hostess - a cute little table with a color blocked top and a butterfly. I'm not quite sure how that evolved into the card I made, but that really is where I started.

Rather than make very defined color blocking, I chose to let mine blend together a bit more. If you look closely, you can see the different sections of color on the background. I started by stamping three ferns (hero arts) in versamark on ivory cardstock and then heat embossing with clear embossing powder.

Next I used a technique called wrinkle free distress. You can see a tutorial here. I used distress inks (sorry, I can't remember which ones I used - crushed olive, a brown & an orange). After drying that, I stamped two of my brand new (package just came yesterday *grin*) A Muse stamps several times over the background with crush olive, aged mahogany & ??something?? marmalade (sorry, I'm still learning the names after using SU inks almost exclusively for 10 years). Because the embossing resists the ink, it gives more depth with a look of layering. I used a paper towel to wipe off any ink from the areas where the embossing is and then sponged some vintage photo ink along the edges.

The butterflies are from Flores Suaves (SU) and Take Flight (Gina K). I stamped them with jet black stazon and sponged on summer sun and tangerine tango. After cutting them out, I sponged the edges with cherry cobbler and added a bit of creamy caramel to the body. I attached them to the card with dimensional tape underneath the wings and glue dots under the body.

The card base is ivory, sponged with vintage photo, and a layer of bravo burgundy separates the card base from the stamped piece.

I appreciate you stopping by today. Spend your weekend making special memories.

3 comments:

Starla said...

I love the colors you used here! And the collage look....
Of course, how can one go wrong with butterflies?! hehe

bensarmom said...

Melody, this is just beautiful! I'm going to have to check out the tutorial you listed.

Susan (rainy) said...

Melody!! This is absolutely stunning... a work of art. Those butterflies look as if they will take flight right off from the card at any moment. LOVE this!