Color Inspiration.

One of the main reasons I started blogging a year-and-a-half ago, was because my friend (and Close to My heart Upline) Yvonne, showed me a card that she had created for a color inspiration challenge over at KWernerDesign. She explained all about blogging at our unit meeting that night and challenged us to use blogs for inspiration and start our own blog to create an online presence for our business.

I was HOOKED from that point on. I started doing tons of color challenges (and other challenges too) but Color Inspiration soon became my total favorite. It was the biggest motivator to get me to create a great card with a fabulous color scheme. When Kristina decided not to do the challenges anymore, I was pretty bummed, but totally understanding...she picked several favorites from the challenge and created a mosaic that linked back to each original card....I am sure it took hours!

The challenges taught me good design and craftsmanship and helped me meet a lot of really great bloggers! I was super excited this week to notice a new color challenge...sort of a one-time-only, (that's okay! Be sure to check out her weekly card videos for ideas and inspiration, they totally rock!!!) I am at home because of the weather and I was really struggling to get some mojo going this week. This color inspiration challenge was perfect!

Here is my card for this week's challenge. I used a stamp set by hero arts and some cardstock from Close to my heart. The little Matryoshka doll is paper pieced as I was trying to incorporate all the colors from the challenge. The bird cage paper is from Hambly....I LOVE my Hambly paper!! I have to have a really good reason to use it though...I am always afraid I will use it up too quickly. Check back tomorrow for an all-Hambly mini album I am finishing up!

My goal was to create a whole stack of Valentine cards for a swap later this month so I used up the rest of the birdcage paper (and traded the mustard + saffron for brown and green on some of the cards)

Some of you had asked about the deer that I used in some of these cards. He is a felt die cut from Close to My Heart....I only had one and I was hesitant to use him, because he is so cute...So I traced him onto cardstock and now I use that as a pattern on other papers so that I can re-create that same idea over and over....

I actually had a tricky time shooting the photos for these....It was WAY too cold to do it outside (I tried, but the -10 wind kept blowing them over) and it was right at sunset...around 5:00 pm....so the sun was quite harsh and kept making bright sun streaks and shadows everywhere whenever I tried to use my usual window to take the pictures.

Wouldn't this be a cute teacher Valentine?

Those little envelopes are waaaay easy to make. I used 2X2 squares, folded them in half and then in half the other way....and then you just fold the corners into the middle and viola, a cute little square envelope. I leave one corner up for the flap...and line it with a scrap of paper.... I practiced some stitching on cards again for the one above....I sewed that ribbon to the card.

The cupcake punch is from Martha Stewart. I used a scissor edging technique....where you scrape the edge of the cardstock with your scissors to rough it up....on a lot of my cards and elements.

That pink frame in the background in some of my pictures is from T.J. Max...I went there last week and bought a huge stack of cool frames...I am trying to decide what to put in them and where to hang them....I want to create a wall of cool frames, possibly on my mantle piece....this is an idea for one of them....It totally matched the color scheme so I had to use it in my pics!

Hope you are having a great week and staying super warm!! If you are making any Valentines, I would love to see them!! I looked online and couldn't find much in the way of inspiration!