Chic Boutique – Pink Bird in a Chalk Cage

Hi Everyone.  Happy Tuesday night and welcome to Jaydee's SU stampin space!  Tonight's card features my favorite….. Chic Boutique.  This has certainly turned into one of my "go to" sets.  (You can see my other Chic Boutique cards here.)

I saw the Stamping411 sketch challenge this week and was inspired to make 2 entirely different cards, tonight's uses one of my embossing folders and chalking.  The stamping411 team always manage to post some fabulous inspiration cards. I really encourage you to visit the site and see the inspiration and cards that have been posted.  I promise you that you will find something to inspire you.

I posted last night about my mojo having gone on vacation and several of you sent me emails or left a comment talking about similar problems.  Getting out of it can be tough and I find that the more cards that I make that don't work, the less inspired I get.  Doing sketch challenges is one of the ways that helps me get back into the swing of things.  Another thing for me…. I have to have a clean workspace…I have to put everything away, clean my stampin scrubs, etc. etc. after every single card and start with an entirely clean slate.  The more "stuff" I have on my table, the more distracted I am.  It's one of the reasons why I elected to stamp on a small table… that way I don't have much space and have to clean up.

Another thing for me, I regularly go through my stamps and do a clean out.  Sometimes I buy a stamp set and think… "oh yeah!  this is going to be my favorite stamp" and, guess what?…. I use it once and find that I really don't get that inspired by it.  However, if it hangs around in my stamping drawer, then I feel that I HAVE to use it because I paid for it….. and, because I don't get inspired by it, I get more despondent.  Consequently, I've learned to say.. enough and pass it along.  It's not that there is anything wrong with the set, I've seen fabulous cards made with that set… it just doesn't work for me. 

I'd be really interested to hear what the rest of you do to get out of the funk so that I can pass that recommendation along to my readers. 

So, back to tonight's card – one of the sketch challenges that got me back into things!  I used my Elegant Bouquet embossing folder as the base for my card and also stamped with two colors that I don't normally use…. pale pink (in this case Pretty in Pink) and pale green (Sage Shadow).  It felt very strange stamping with spring colors when it was -15 outside! :-)  I really tried to get a good picture of this card, but nothing I did shows how soft and pretty and vibrant it is in real life.  The pics look flat.  I played around with exposure, contrast and brightness and just couldn't get it to pop!

It turned out to be a color combination I actually rather liked – out of my comfort zone completely, but that's the thing about challenges and pushing yourself out of your box:-)

One of the key things about the card was that I wanted to add some color to the texture on the background, without using DSP.  To do this, I used my sponge daubers, and my chalks.  I also used the little applicators that come with the chalks as well as the eraser.  Before I go into details on how to do this, and the recipe for the card.  Let me show you a close up:

You can see the soft Pretty in Pink on the flowers and the Sage Shadow on the "leaf" details.  The colors are looking very washed out on my screen, I hope they are OK on yours. 

To create this effect,

1. I used two sponge daubers and chalked them up with the two colors I was using.
2. I gently went over the embossed areas with the sponge dauber.
3. I used the little applicators for the smaller areas, like the ends of the "leaves"
4. I then went over the areas I had chalked and erased between the flower petals and other areas that the chalk had accumulated.  I didn't get rid of all of the excess, just areas where I thought there was a little too much.

Next I stamped the image and colored in the details with my PiP and SS markers.  I then took the pink chalked dauber and went over the card stock all around the bird, both inside and outside the cage.  I also ran the edge of the card stock in my PiP classic ink pad.

Last thing, was to stamp a flower and use crystal effects on it, add crystal effects to the bird, and, when it was dry, I mounted the flower above the sentiment.  I also took a pale green circle rhinestone and "freed" it from its legs and adhered it with two mini glue dots.  I popped up the bottom matt layer using Stampin' Dimensionals and did the same with the central focal point and raised it above the pink layer.

I hope you like it and are inspired to use this technique if you haven't already done so.  I'm looking forward to trying it again.  It works fantastically well with the embossing folders and would work with some of the texturz plates.

Last night my friends Brenda and Cherie and I decided it was a girl's night.  However, we decided not to do the usual adult girl things…. instead we spent time playing with the Wii.  What a hoot.  It was fabulous to laugh until tears were streaming and share good times with good friends.  I didn't know either Brenda or Cherie before I looked up an SU demonstrator late last year.  How lucky I was to pick Brenda!  and how lucky that Brenda had such a great friend in Cherie!  So thank you guys… you rock my world.

I hope you all have a fabulous Wednesday and that you get to spend time doing the things you love with those that mean the most to you.  I really thank you so much for spending time in my area of the stamping blogosphere today.  Your visits and your support are very much appreciated.

Cyber hugs

Jaydee