Hello to my regulars and welcome to those who are stopping by as part of the Collected Crafty Collab Hop! If you're following the hop, you should have gotten here from Tracy. At the end of this post, I'll link to the next stop!
If this is your first time checking out this hop, let me share a little background with you. Chatting with Karen, Anna, and Marie, we discovered a few things:
- We all love squirrels, but can also be just as easily distracted as the fuzzy little friends. Hence the squirrel in the logo and our affectionate name for our group, The Squirrel Girls.
- That we wanted to create a hop series to help us use the supplies we've been "squirreling" away.
- We wanted to bring more attention to blogs, still a vital part of the crafting community.
As it turns out, there are other bloggers out there just like us, giving us the chance to create a great monthly hop series! Each month, we will focus on a theme and supply type. We can decide whether we wish to use one or both. This month we could focus on Halloween or Fall, use sequins, or both. I chose fall and of course could not resist finding a way to work sequins in!
You're not going to believe this, but this card was going to be very simple. Really. Let me take you on a journey through my mind. Buckle up: it's gonna be a bumpy ride (but the scenery is nice and the music is great)!
My original design was going to be some sort of watercolor or paint stamp effect behind a single leaf.
So far so good, right? This stamp from the Concord and 9th Lace Leaf Stamp set was pretty perfect. But my next snag came when I was looking for some leaf shaped post-it notes that came with a card kit a couple of years ago. I'd never really thought of a good use for them until now. But low and behold, they were nowhere to be found. But when I stumbled on a pack of leaves made from handmade paper that I'd never used. I figured one big leaf would be perfect!
Ok, ok: maybe two leaves. After all, that background stamp is pretty bold. And the ink was a little darker than I'd originally been envisioning....
And maybe that ink is so much darker than I thought, that the leaves didn't "pop" the way I wanted them. But a circle of tracing paper could fix that!
But man that tracing paper circle looks kind of empty and weird now. And the angles just don't seem to work somehow. But these faux skeleton leaves have also been in the hoard a long time, so maybe one of those could work! Ok, maybe two. Man, three should be perfect!
After that, I just needed a sentiment. And sequins, hand picked out of a mix that came with a different card kit. And woah! I cut that all a little smaller than I realized! Looks like I need a couple of mats! Hmmm.. This simple card isn't so simple.
Maybe I'll nail that "simple" aesthetic next time....
Don't forget to keep hopping to see how everyone else answered this theme! Next up: Valerie!