Yesterday's other card

My mojo may have returned after being AWOL but it didn't like being worked too hard! Sarah's card with the butterflies wasn't very elaborate and didn't take too long to make, so I thought I would continue the good work and make a card for a friend's birthday next Wednesday. Oh dear! It seems I'm unable to concentrate if I have time in hand....I was fairly satisfied with the final result, although it might have looked better with a symmetrical design, but I sweated gallons before I reached that point.

First I picked up the pad of autumn papers I bought recently. Anyone who reads this blog semi-regularly will know I'm an autumn nut and I tried hard to come up with a good idea, but it just wasn't right for this particular friend who is a dainty pink and blue person rather than a striking yellow and orange one. So the papers went back in the drawer. I suddenly thought of the willow pattern china stamps by Joanna Sheen which I've had for a couple of years and used only a few times on ATCs. There was my blue! And including the big plate gave me an excuse for using my new Eyelet Nesties as well - the largest was a perfect fit. So far so good.

Then it was downhill all the way, or do I mean uphill? Nothing was quite right. I tried a MS border punch with similar eyelets but got the spacing wrong the first time and couldn't make the second attempt fit anywhere. I then stamped more of the china as the background using Versamark ink, looked at the square mid blue card thus produced, added the strip of ribbon and felt it was all wrong, so I cut the front off and tried it as an easel card, sticking that same front onto dark blue. No, it needed a light edge - and besides, the end of the ribbon on the back showed - so I unstuck it (being thankful I'd only used a glue stick and not my tape gun), cut a white mat and remounted it all. Oh, and at some point I was trimming slivers off edges because I realised that the finished card was going to be a hair's breadth too big for the available envelope, which it was anyway so went into a much bigger one folded over. No, I didn't attempt to make one the right size...

Still with me? We now have an easel card with blank inside and no support for the front edge. I think it took another half an hour minimum before I fixed the final piece, with the jugs, like the plate, stamped in Brilliance Mediterranean Blue. It only took three attempts to add a small insert sheet with a punched border at the bottom (those MS punches really do not like single sheets of thin paper and it's high time I remembered) and the best happening of the day was not smudging the stamped greeting.

Now all I have to do is remember to post the thing in good time.