Featuring one of my Favorite Retiring Colors!

Aloha, all!

     It's time for another challenge over the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge blog, and this week the challenge is to make a monochrome card.  Ooooh – which color to choose!  Of course, I had to choose one of my favorite colors that will be retiring come June 2013, and my choice this time is Not Quite Navy.  For me, it's actually a good thing that this color is retiring because I was just about to HAVE to replace my NQN stamp pad.  I've been doing Stampin' Up! for many years, and I think it was one of the first that I ever bought.  Sigh.  Now I will just be putting up with it for another couple of months.

     We're also just a couple of months (less than that!) away from the end date of the Stampin' Up! 2013 Spring Catalog.  So I decided to focus on a stamp set from that catalog, Oh, Hello.   I have to tell you that this stamp set wasn't one that grabbed my attention when the catalog first came out.  But then I started seeing such cute ideas online, and decided just recently that I would add it to my collection.  And I've had fun with it!

     I used all four of the image stamps from this set, as well as one of the three greeting stamps (kind of silly to use more than one, huh?). 

• For the strip of chevrons down the left side of the card, I stamped the dotted outline stamps in full Not Quite Navy ink.  Then for the "fill" stamps, I inked the stamp and then stamped it on scrap paper first and THEN stamped it over the outline stamps.  Of course, I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig for every stamp on this strip!
• For the oval sentiment layers, I first stamped the oval design on a plain piece of card stock, using the same stamping technique that I used for the "fill" stamps on the left strip.  Then I stamped the "Thanks So Much"  on top of that.  Finally, I cut it out using the second smallest of the Ovals Collection Framelits Die. 
• The second layer of the ovals involved stamping the oval image from the Oh Hello stamp set using a fully-inked stamp and I cut it with the third smallest of the Oval Collection Framelits.
• Finally I cut a piece of Not Quite Navy Card Stock with the fourth smallest of the oval framelits, and glued all the layers together and set them aside.

     I cut a length of Not Quite Navy 3/8" Taffeta Ribbon and tied it along the strip of the chevrons, before adhering the oval layer with Stampin' Dimensionals.  At this point, I decided that I'd like to have the rose image on the top part of the card.  If I'd been a bit smarter with my designing, I would have thought of that earlier and stamped it before I adhered the ovals layer.  As it was, Stamp-a-ma-jig or no, I managed to get it just a bit too far away from the ovals layer for my taste.  It seemed like it would be an easy "fix" to just use my NQN Stampin' Write Marker to extend the stem.  Well, with my current medical problems, my hand is not as steady as it used to be.  Rats!  Off center.  Well, I just told my hand to behave and made a double stem that looks kind of natural to me!  And so it stayed!!!  I added some Very Vanilla Brads to the upper right corner which seemed to complete the design for me and out came the camera!

     This is one of those times when I ended up with a card that was not like the original card I'd stamped, put together and photographed for this project.  I did that the night before with a different Framelit and woke up thinking, "What was I thinking!? There's a perfectly good stamp in that set to use with a framelit, and why did I use something else?"  I don't always share those missteps with you, but thought I'd show you the card that I first made. I definitely like the second one better.  Removing that framelit layer just involves "popping" the dimensionals.  (Yes, I could have done it when I stamped the flower, but I didn't think it was going to be such a big deal!)

     So now – if you have a favorite color that you'd like to show off, we'd love to have you make a fun card with it and share it with all of us over at the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge blog!  The challenge goes for two weeks, so you have plenty of time!