Be Your Own Kind of Wonderful

Hi everyone! Thank you, thank you for your votes for my Paper Crafts Gallery Idol Round 2 card. I made it to the Top 15!

I'm moving on to Round 3, and the challenge this time was to make your own stamped background. I'm not going to lie...when I saw this theme, I was pretty anxious. The last time I created my own stamped background that was not in Photoshop was...well, I can't even remember. But, I kept reminding myself that it's just stamping, and I do that. :)

Before I share the process, I wanted to show you the final card:

Last Friday after I saw the theme, I flipped through my inspiration files and stamps. I was inspired by THIS picture. I found a circle stamp from the Simon Says Stamp Circle Friends set, and began picking the colors.

I'm a little ashamed to admit that the sheet above was one of five test sheets to pick the colors--I must have tried about 50 inks. The blues, green, and yellow look summery to me, and I like how they looked when they overlapped.

I moved on to stamping the background. There was some testing to figure out the amount of overlap needed (seven lines overlapping for the rows and three lines for the columns in case you were curious). To make the lines straight, I used a stamp positioner. Even with that tool, I held my breath every time I stamped. ;) Here's what the sheet looked like when I was done:

Doesn't it look like a quilt? You can see in the top left where I dropped my block at the end of stamping (argh!!).

After all that work, I used a CAS design. Here's a close-up:

I used a digital brush for the frame around the sentiment from Rhonna Designs and typed in the sentiment. I added a tiny die-cut star using the Holiday Shapes die (love that die!). The card was finished off with a strip of the same aqua glitter cardstock at the top and some Caribbean twine from The Twinery.

As part of the Gallery Idol contest, there's a vote for the Top 10. If you like my card, I would really appreciate it if you vote for me! You can click on the link at the top of the sidebar or go HERE, click on the image, and vote. You do have to register (it's a quick process), but if you have already registered, you can simply log in. Thank you so much!

Thank you for stopping by and thank you for the support! Have a great week.


Supplies
Cardstock: (white) PTI); (blue) Bazzill; (aqua glitterstock) The Paper Studio/Hobby Lobby
Clear stamps: (circle from Circle Friends) Simon Says Stamp
Digital stamp: (frame around sentiment from Nautical Chic brushes) Rhonna Designs
Pigment ink: (Grass) Fresh Ink; (Sunflower Yellow, Pearlescent Sky Blue Brilliance Inks) Tsukineko
Twine: (Caribbean) The Twinery
Dies: (star from Holiday Shapes) Simon Says Stamp; (Small Circle) Spellbinders
Font: (Bell MT, Jenna Sue)