Featured Stamper Challenge plus Bright & Happy

Sundays at Splitcoaststampers are for the Featured Stamper challenge.  This is when someone who is a big part of the community and who has a large card gallery (we're talking hundreds of cards posted) is named as the featured stamper of the week, and in her honor, everyone is challenged to pick a card from their gallery to be an inspiration to a new card, changing at least two things in the new version because the point is not to make a slavish copy but jump from that design to something new.  Yesterday I made two cards in honor of the week's featured stamper, "pinkberry" aka Diane.

The first card that inspired me was a Christmas card, and I used her card layout with different colors to make my card.  I also moved the eyelets from where they were  in her design.

The stamped image is from Judikins; I stamped it in clear ink and embossed it in dark green embossing powder, then layered the image onto a scrap of yellow to set it off from the darker colors I picked for my background.  The background colors are all from a paper "slab" (made by Die Cuts With a View, or DCWV) that includes several dozen coordinating designs, in this case all Christmas themed.  I expect to be using paper from this slab for years to come. My heirs will probably inherit some of it!

Anyway I layered the red designer paper onto a cream colored card base, and added a strip of dark green striped, set off by backing it with the lighter striped paper with the stripes in a contrasting direction.  The image was next, mounted on foam tape to give it dimension.  Then I tied ribbon onto the card.  You don't see that many ribbons on my cards, especially not with bows, because I am a klutz at tying them and making them look nice, but in this case, it worked out.  I especially like the effect of the contrasting sides of the ribbon.  Finally I added a dark yellow eyelet to each corner to further tie in the yellow in the focal piece.  The final card is on the dark side but has a country Christmas feel, I think.  I also made three more of this card design to complete half of my March Christmas card challenge!

The second card was inspired by a pinkberry card that used lots of layers of contrasting papers all from the coordinated "Dill Blossom" line of papers by S.E.I.  As it happens I had bought the same set of papers when they came out several years ago, along with some coordinating rub-ons.  While Diane had opted for the turquoise blue color set, I had chosen the tan/orange ones, but had all the same prints.  So I was able to make the same version of her card using the different colors but otherwise the same prints in the same layers.  The other changes I made were to make my own corner pieces instead of the lovely die cut ones in her card, and to use those coordinating rub ons as the focal image rather than a stamped image.  Here is my version:

If you look closely you can see why I added the vine border on the focal piece:  a couple of "leaves" from another rub on came off on the card while I was applying the main flower, and I placed the border strategically to integrate them into the design.  I often find that some of my best touches on cards come from hiding a mistake!

Not much else to say about the construction of this card since it mostly consisted of cutting, adding adhesive, and layering the various pieces.  It is more layers then I normally tend to use but I like how it came out.

Two quick cards made last week when I was making myself sit down at the craft table just to get the pump primed again:

The flower center is a Stampin' Up stamp.  The words around the edge of the circle are "Happy Birthday", but this card design could make an all occasion card by adding just a colored flower center and whatever sentiment desired elsewhere on the card.  Again, not much to say about how these were constructed, just some cutting and gluing.  In both cases the cards were built around the ribbon piece I wanted to use, and I chose papers to coordinate with them.  The flowers are from Dollar Tree, taken apart and reconstructed.  I tried gluing the flower layers together unsuccessfully and ultimately used a brad to hold them together and attached the flower center on top of the brad.  The bright happy colors of both cards pepped me up when I had sat down at the table rather grimly since I hadn't been feeling very inspired for a few days and was frustrated.  They did the trick and got me moving again!

Thanks for looking, and have a great day!