Confession: you’re about to meet the card that almost wasn’t.
As I’m sure many of you who make cards will agree, there are some days where you feel like you’re all out of creative mojo, and nothing seems to be coming together or looking right. I was having one of those days when making this.
My process started with the gorgeous, bold Modern Merry & Bright stamp, a 2-piece stamp from The Stamp Market that includes an outline. After stamping in Orchid ink, I let it dry for what I thought was long enough, and then moved on to embossing the outline, slightly offset, in gold. I opted for fine gold embossing powder, but clearly my underlying ink just wasn’t quite dry yet because there was a lot of powder in spots I didn’t want it. (If you’re wondering, yes, I even used an anti-static powder bag before!) Truly, this is nothing wrong with any of the products – simply impatience on my part!
Part of me wanted to call it quits and start over, but I decided to persevere. There were gold flecks where I didn’t intend for them to be, but I hate to waste so I moved on to stamping a pointsettia and some greenery. I didn’t have a plan for any of this, nor did I necessarily think i’d be using the pointsettia on this card. However, I often get re-inspired by slightly switching gears, and this is what happened.
Out came The Stamp Market Pointsettia stamp set and dies, Holly Jolly stamp set and dies, as well as Color Crush ink in Emerald, Jade and Fuschia. Since I’d used gold on my earlier heat embossing, I also embossed a few boughs in the same powder – this time with more success! After die cutting all the foliage and assembling it into a little arrangement, I placed it above the Merry & Bright sentiment. It was at that point that I was back on board – things were looking much better!
I backed my white card panel with craft foam, then centered it on a piece of coordinating Color Crush cardstock in Orchid. After adhering it to my card base, I finished the card with a small sparkly jewel in the middle of the pointsettia.
In the end, things turned out pretty nicely – well, in my opinion! I’d love to hear about what you do when you run into crafting design ruts. Do you stop entirely? Switch to a different project? Revisit it another day? Do tell!