Triple Duty

That's right. These cards are kind of a 'three for one deal'

Firstly, we had some birthdays to celebrate, hence the reason for birthday cards. Second, we have been off on a whirlwind visit to New Mexico - so no posts for a few days. It was time to get back into it. And third, I am finally getting around to taking up the colour inspiration challenge from Kristina Werner. Kristina is a talented lady, who regularly sets these challenges. If you are ever suffering from a creative block, or want to try something new, then this could be just the kick in the pants you need - worked for me anyway!

So this week the colour combo was chocolate chip, new in colours kiwi kiss and baja breeze, and whisper white. I must confess, I am still making up my mind about kiwi kiss, but it worked really well with this combo. It would have been perfect for a masculine card, but as I said already, the mission of the day was birthday cards - for ladies - so I decided to go with the big flower from the Eastern Blooms stamp set and see what happened.

For the first card I inked the stamp up with the baja breeze ink, and then for a little bit of added interest, carefully rolled the edges in kiwi kiss, before stamping on white card. This 'rock and roll' technique is an easy one to do, and you can use as many colours as you like - just remembering to start with the lightest colours and work your way darker, so as not to spoil your ink pads. To finish the flowers off, I stamped a small flower from the same set using the kiwi kiss ink, and popped them together with a half pearl from the pretties kit.

I gently curled up each of the petals and attached the finished flowers to the card front using stampin' dimensionals to give extra lift. The card front was simply layers of kiwi kiss card, some patterned paper from the new Baja Breeze Patterns designer series papers, and a length of the 1.6cm wide chocolate chip grosgrain ribbon, on a choc chip card base. A simple choc chip greeting from the 'sincere salutations' set, and the card front was done. For the inside of the card I quickly added some 'stamped off' flowers in the bottom corner and we were good to go!

The second card came about as a happy accident. Well, not so much an accident, as a by product of card number one. After stamping each of the flowers for the first card, I was stamping the excess ink off on my scrap paper, so I could reink for the next flower, without getting kiwi kiss all over the baja breeze ink pad. That piece of scrap paper got to be looking so pretty!!!

So here it is. A chocolate chip card base, with stamped off 'rock and roll' eastern bloom flowers on white card. Some of the flowers have been stamped off once, and some twice (ink up stamp, stamp on scrap paper, stamp on project, stamp on project again, then reink and repeat!). Once again some choc chip ribbon, a greeting from 'a little birthday cheer', and an inside like the first card. Ready to post!


So there you go. If you feel like a challenge today, check out Kristina's blog. She has past challenges posted still, so if these colours don't appeal, you can choose the colour combo that suits you! I have to say though, I enjoyed working with set colours, that I may not have used together otherwise - a bit like brain gym for stampers!