Aloha, all!
The challenge this week at the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge blog is to make a special "Thank You" card. Oh, I'm always making Thank You cards. And every time I make one, I'm thinking of someone special I want to thank. So, for me, I think of every personally handmade Thank You card as special!
But this challenge for the design team was to go just a step further and do something new or out of the ordinary to make a Thank You card (or gift) really special. So I decided to use some new Stampin' Up! products I've never before used.
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The first thing that I needed to do with this project was to pick out the stamp set. I originally thought that I'd use a new stamp set for the "special" item. But, as I looked through my shelves of stamp sets, I realized that I had a lot of sets that I've had since the LAST catalog that I'd hardly ever used. And when I came across the Button Buddies Stamp Set, I realized that the very first time I had used it was exactly one year ago this week as I prepared for my 2011 Stampin' Up! Convention swaps! And I'm hard put to remember when I might have used the set since. How could that be as it's such a fun set!?
OK – I had the stamp set out, but which embellishments should I use? The stamp set is, after all, called "Button" buddies. But I've used buttons in lots of projects and I still needed something "special". Then, as I spun my Stack and Store Embellishment Caddy around to see what I might use, those Dahlias almost flew out at me! Bingo! And I instantly knew that not only did I have my embellishments, I also had my colors – the new 2012-2014 In Colors that went with the Dahlias!
I really did try to find a use for all 5 of the new In Colors. I stamped vases in Summer Starfruit, Raspberry Ripple, and Primrose Petals, and made the leaves out of Gumball Green. But I finally gave up on using Midnight Muse – I'll get that into another project, pretty soon, though, I'm sure! I also wanted to have some Designer Series Paper in the card. But I've not yet purchased all of the current paper sets, and the only paper I had with any of the new colors was the Christmas paper set, Be of Good Cheer. Aha! Another "bingo" moment! It might be Christmas paper, but that Gumball Green polka dot print could surely be used for something other than Christmas – and it matched the Gumball Green ink I'd used for the leaves!
After that, it was just a matter of adding a some layers, a little texture (I stamped two of each vase, cut one out and adhered it with some glue dots over the originally-stamped vases to give them a bit of a shadow and some depth), and bow to set off the "Thank You" sentiment from Sassy Salutations.
Oh, and of course the Dahlias! They are neither buttons nor brads, so I adhered them with some of the glue dots, too.
The best thing about making this card was that, while I was in the process of working out the design, someone did something really nice for me and I actually have a reason to send this card out in the mail right away. Hmmm, wonder if she's reading my blog post today!
