Welcome back everyone! Whether you're a longtime reader or coming here for the first time from the marvelous Marie, I'm excited to see you!
The Squirrel Squad and I are back again this month with a new challenge! This month, we decided to CASE another Squirrel Sister's card! CASE is an acronym that stands for Copy And Selectively Edit. We could choose whichever card we wanted from our designated casee, so you'll see a variety of techniques and themes employed today! And I don't think I'm alone when I say the excitement is two-fold for us! Not only are we excited to see each other's projects, but we're excited to see which card of ours was chosen to be CASEd!
I have absolutely accidentally CASEd someone's card before. Sometimes a particular stamp or die has such an obvious use, that it can't be helped. I always feel a bit awkward when I do that, particularly since I try to be original. It felt great to knowingly CASE someone for a change! I knew I could trust my design decisions because I'd already seen them played out successfully!
When I knew that I was CASEing Karen, I immediately knew what I wanted to CASE! Ok, to be honest, as I started scrolling looking for the original, I really wavered because she has so many beautiful and creative cards. So long story short, I might be CASEing again. Let's start with my choice:
Ok, yes, I actually ended up being inspired by two sets. When I first saw them last year, I fell in love with them! While I loved the idea of making a full set, I decided to keep it simple on myself this time and only make a single card, so I decided to follow the rainbow!
I'd remembered receiving a die cut set as a bonus in a fellow crafter's destash. I'd never looked at it too closely (or used it), so I went in thinking it punched only the embroidery holes. It does not. It punches the solid square with the embroidery holes along the edge. I loved the off-center concept of the circles card, but I was nervous about putting all that together on the edge of the card, so I channeled the star set with a centered design. I nested the dies together, taped them to a front panel, and die cut them out. This gave me the series of smaller, perfectly nested squares. Starting in the center and working out, I did a simple backstitch around the edge of each square (Roy G. Biv for the win!). This was inspired by the rainbow circle card. Once the embroidery was done, I glued the original card panel to a black mat, then used liquid glue to adhere each square. In retrospect, I wish I'd copied the biggest square die cut in the black mat so there was just a little more room for the floss to sink in to. But next time! Finally, I finished off with a Thanks sentiment which I think is from the same Inkadinkado set that Karen used!
I love how this card turned out and I loved the process of just quietly embroidering this design. I will DEFINITELY be making more of these! I will have a full set yet! And, right when I was finishing up, I realized i could have used the die cut as a guide to punch holes directly into the paper, so I think we can see what one of my next experiments is going to be!
Thank you for stopping by! Be sure to keep hopping! The Squirrel Squad is a small group so the hop won't take you long, but will leave you feeling totally inspired! Next up: the brilliant and talented Karen! If you love what we're doing, please leave a comment! We love it even more when you subscribe!