Aloha, all!
As many cards as I have in my stash, I manage to get myself into situations where I don’t have JUST.THE.RIGHT.CARD for an occasion that’s suddenly come up. That is exactly what happened when my husband mentioned that he wanted to go to a coffee for a neighbor who is turning 94 years old last week. Saturday morning coffee is a big deal for this particular neighbor. He has been instrumental in creating the Saturday morning coffee event that anyone who lives in our condo building can attend. None of the floral or geometrical birthday cards that I had in my stash were going to work at all. Enter the stamp set, Nothing’s Better Than.
Trouble With The Layout
As Charlie has been so instrumental in starting the Saturday morning coffee, as well as keeping it going, the coffee cups in the stamp set were going to be on the front of the card. I knew right away that I was going to use my Stamparatus to create a line of coffee cups going down the left edge of the card.
Then I had no trouble at all deciding which words from the stamp set I as going to use. First of all, Coffee was a must. Then, because Charlie is awesome, the phrase with that word as a must. Finally, since the birthday was going to be part of this past Saturday’s coffee hour, Today’s Plan was going to lead into the sentiment.
That’s where I ran into “trouble.” Oh, it wasn’t really trouble. It was just that I couldn’t figure out a way to spiff up the sentiment side of the card and not run into space problems. Either than or I was going to have to figure out some layers so that I could have some texture behind the sentiment. But I didn’t want the coffee cups to be texturized. And the “buts” kept coming. That’s why the picture you see at the top of this article has coffee cups all lined up, but across the top of the card. That gave me plenty of room to develop a nice set of layers for the sentiment using the Stitched So Sweetly Dies.
I stamped a Happy Birthday greeting inside the card, added some more stamped coffee cups, and I was (finally) done.
What To Do With The Leftover Stamped Cups
I’d already stamped the coffee cups down the left side of what was supposed to be the stamped layer for the original card. Throwing that nicely stamped piece of cardstock in the trash just didn’t seem right. Oh, I could have cut off the unstamped section of the Very Vanilla Cardstock. I can always use small pieces of that. But the stamped coffee cups just kept calling out to me: “Use me!”
Use them I did.
I didn’t feel compelled to make this a completely masculine card. So I went looking for something with a little bit of fancy color to it. After much deep thought (?) I chose to use the very red Poppy Parade Cardstock. It didn’t take much more thought to go looking for some rectangle dies that I could use to spiff the card up a bit. I finally decided on two of the rectangles from the Scalloped Contours Dies as there was one large enough to mat the main stamped layer as well as the sentiment layer.
As I was making this card, I started thinking about where I’d send it. Aha! I have a sister Stampin’ Up! demonstrator who is definitely a coffee afficionado. So I had to add at least one embellishment. I didn’t want to get too fancy so I pulled out a length of White Baker’s Twine, colored it with my Poppy Parade Stampin’ Blends, and added it behind the sentiment layer. That was just the little touch I needed.
For The Inside Of The Card
As I’d just made a card that I’d stamped on the inside, I could hardly say that I “forgot” to stamp the inside of this card. Fortunately, the Nothing’s Better Than Stamp Set had a handy sentiment I could use. So use it I did!
The Bottom Line
When you’ve stamped something that just didn’t work out, don’t automatically throw it away. There just might be another nice card lurking behind it!
Happy Stamping!
