Firstly I’d like to thank the Design Team 2 at the Pals Paper Arts for selecting my card as a winner this week. It’s an honour to be recognised. I’ve happily added the badge to my awards page.

I’d also like to thank the City Crafter Challenge blog team for selecting my card for their Spotlight Artists award. Two badges in one day is pretty awesome!

The Paper Players‘ challenge this week is for a Clean and Simple “Girly thanks” card. I can definitely do the clean and simple, that’s what my cards tend to be, the girly thanks part needed a little effort.

This is a deceptively simple card but it took a number of attempts. I started off making a vertical card but it wasn’t going the way I wanted. Then I wanted a large very vanilla border and managed to mess up the cutting and the image portion was too small. But finally, I got it right. The image is from Flowering Flourishes and I stamped it in rose red on the very vanilla (which, in case you’re wondering is 5/8 inch smaller than the card base). The sentiment comes from the soon to be retiring set Painted Petals which is one of my favourite sets at the moment. I then matted this with a piece of rose red which is just 1/8 inch larger than the very vanilla. I like the effect given by a skinny mat. This was then mounted on a very vanilla card base.

I lined the envelope with a piece of the backgrounds DSP in rose red (also retiring but new patterns are coming out in the new catalogue) cut to size using the envelope liner framelits. When I need a liner, I tend to cut out 8 at a time so that they are ready to go. I don’t line the entire envelope since it’s not visible, instead I cut a piece of 12 by 12 into 8 piece 3 by 6 inches and then cut them out with the framelits two at a time. I figure that the DSP is much thinner than the cardstock so two shouldn’t be a problem. I even score them (also two at a time) using my stampin’ trimmer so it’s easy to grab one and line an envelope.

See you tomorrow,

Liz