Another Play Date

I guess I need to photograph my cards rather than scanning them. I don't want to hassle with it honestly. It means I have to clear my camera's memory so I don't reload my pictures. (A couple of weeks ago I deleted literally hundreds of duplicate photos from my PC!) But when the cards have dimension to them the scanner just doesn't do justice to how they look.

This is another card for The Play Date Cafe challenge. The colors are black and white with just a splash of red. My white IS pure white, it just looks yellow because of the scanner.

I cannot focus to write this. While I was finishing up my card we found the 2nd baby snake in 2 days in our house. I was not too terribly bothered when we found one, but two has me thinking that there must be a mother some place. Just when I thought I was getting used to things creeping around my house in Taiwan...now things are slithering around! At the moment I am feeling like this year cannot pass quickly enough. I am SO ready to go back to the States where I do not have to be constantly on guard against things creeping, crawling, flying, jumping or SLITHERING through the room!

~La

Challenge: Color Throwdown #157

I am finding that there are a lot of card challenges in blog-land. They are great starting spots for inspiration. The one I chose to work with yesterday is on a blog titled "Color Throwdown", and they had a rather difficult combination in my opinion. Here are their chosen colors:

I pulled out the colors, except crumb cake which I do not own. I substituted Simply Suede because it's the closest thing I have. It occurred to me that this color combination might appear in Asian things and, since I have an Asian stamp set I've been itching to use, this might be the perfect time.

My original plan was to make a clean and simple card, so I stamped the girls and the Chinese lanterns onto one piece of white cardstock. After coloring the girls dresses with markers I stamped the lanterns onto various Asian papers that I've purchased here in Taiwan, and embossed them in gold. (The main reason for the embossing was so that I could see the images to cut. The papers are so busy that I didn't think I would be able to see regular ink!) I then cut out MANY lanterns before choosing which ones I liked best for this card. I ran them through my Xyron sticker maker, which was a life saver for attaching these little pieces!

After stamping, coloring, embossing and assembling, I decided it was time to add some background. Here things went horribly wrong. I created masks for the girls and the lanterns but when I stamped the background images everything just looked like a muddy mess. So I had to cut again. I cannot say how many times I cut lanterns yesterday, between embossed images for paper pieces, masks and then cutting the whole thing off of the original piece I am rather tired of Chinese lanterns!

It was necessary to rethink the background, so I turned to an extremely talented blogger, Michelle Zindorf, for inspiration. (See here if you're interested.) Try as I might, I cannot brayer on color like she does. I always end up with a hard edge. So I just look to her for guidance on colors and then I sponge them on. I wanted a look of glowing light around the lanterns and I knew Michelle would have the inspiration I needed. So here is my card:

And here is the inside:
This card will go to a dear friend who has a listening ear like no one else I know.

~La