My Cup of Tea!

Aloha, all!

     Am I ever glad to have a project to share with you today.  Actually, it's already "tonight" on the U. S. East Coast!  But here in Hawaii it's just the middle of the afternoon.  And I had every intention of posting this project earlier, but my computer had other plans for me.  The good news is that I know my way around those electronic critters and am quite familiar with how to beat them at their own games.  Note that I'm writing this on a computer, and so far it hasn't just deleted my blog post!

     But I'm all relaxed now and enjoying my paper crafting!

     This is a Sketch Challenge from Create with Connie and Mary, and you know how much I like Sketch Challenges!  I have three more such challenges on my craft table, and hope to get to them before too long.  For today's challenge, I chose the Stampin' Up! Stamp Set, Tea Party.  It's new in the 2013-2014 Stampin' Up! Catalog, and I'm really enjoying using it.  In fact, you'll see another stamp from the set in tomorrow's blog post.

     The colors that I used for this card are Soft Suede, Pool Party, Bermuda Bay and Early Espresso.  I used the Early Espresso on the tag because I thought it showed up just a bit better than the Soft Suede.  The background paper is a Soft Suede piece from the the Neutrals Collection Designer Series Paper (DSP) Stack.  There are four designs in these stacks, in all of the Core Color and In Color groups of colors.  I thought that Bermuda Bay Card Stock would be a nice accent piece for the Soft Suede, but also thought that it needed some texture.  As I was looking at the Designer Series Paper, I realized that this design is very close to the design in the Fancy Fan Embossing Folder.  So out that folder came, and I think it goes very nicely with the DSP!

     The sketch for the challenge showed an oval element and two tags crossing along the bottom of the design.  One of the reasons I chose the Tea Party Stamp Set was because it had some oval shaped stamps.  The oval with the tea party design fit best as I could punch it with the Extra-Large Oval Punch.  For the tags, I used some Pool Party Seam Binding Ribbon to accent the Pool Party Card Stock card base.  I tried several colors for the stamped tag, and ended up with another Pool Party element in the card.  For this, I just colored in the sentiment from another of the stamps in the Tea Party Stamp Set, using my Early Espresso Stampin' Write Marker.  I hand notched the tag and adhered it, as I had the oval element, using Stampin' Dimensionals.

     A fun card and I know just the person who's going to be on the receiving end of it!  That's where I have the most fun – writing notes in my own hand-made cards and sending them to friends and relatives.  I hope you get to use your own card projects that way, too!