I’m really getting into challenges at the moment and this card is for the Hand Stamped Sentiments challenge. It was an interesting challenge because whilst I loved the colours together, when I tried to work with them they lost what I loved. As my mother pointed out (from an experience with patchwork), the proportions of colours make a big difference. Although the colours hint a little towards Halloween, I wanted to go in a different direction. Maybe Jen is right, maybe I am a rebel! This one took a number of days!

For the background, I used a retired wheel stamp, Alhambra, which I converted to a clear stamp – so much easier to handle and very easy to do. Just peel the rubber off the stamp and mount it on the clear mount cling foam that Stampin’ Up! handily sells. I stamped it in Blackberry Bliss on Pear Pizzazz. This was going to be a vertical card but after some deliberation (and sleeping on it overnight) I decided it looked better in this format. The sentiment is from a Hostess Set named Let Your Hair Down which is tremendously good value at $9 for the clear set ($12 for wood) when you pay for it with hostess dollars. After matting the sentiment in the required basic black and adhering this and the background stripe onto the blackberry bliss base, all that was left was to line the envelope. I used a piece from the Park Lane DSP which is so pretty that it’s almost a waste to use on an envelope liner! But still, if you sign up as a Stampin’ Up! demo this month on my team, both you and I get a free pack of DSP for six months. That’s a really good deal!