2 Sketches 4 You - Kazan's Sketch 13

Hello friends! It's a cool, windy and cloudy day here, just perfect for staying inside and playing with paper! This card is for the 2 Sketches 4 You challenge this week, using Kazan's Sketch 13. Here's the sketch:

And here's my take on it. Please excuse the pictures, as I said there's no sun shining through the clouds today and I had to take them inside.

The base is Bazzill white burlap textured cardstock. The striped paper is from the My Minds Eye Be Merry line, and is called Candy Stripes. I machine stitched around the perimeter with a dark green thread for a little added interest.

The sentiment was printed on my printer, trimmed, inked with brown, and matted on a scrap of shiny pink cardstock. The lace is a scrap of vintage lace my friend Tish gave me - it came from her grandmother's craft stash - how sweet is that! The green velvet ribbon is from one of my favorite online stores, One Hundred Wishes. I made the blingy flourish by using one of the Autumn Leaves Rhonda Farrer stamps from the Flourishes 2 set and stamping it onto cardstock, trimming it, glueing and adding some 'Fairy Dust' glitter.




And my pride and joy is the flower - I love how it came out! I printed the Christmas Carol 'Silent Night' our on my inkjet printer from the website you can find to the left. I decided on the petal shape I wanted, freehand cut a template out on a piece of scrap cardstock, and then traced it 5 times onto the sheet music. After I cut out each of the 5 petals I fitted them into my Cuttlebug 'Textile' embossing folder and embossed them. Next I inked them with brown ink, added a small bead of glue around the outer edges, glittered them with more of the Fairy Dust glitter and set them aside to dry. While the glitter was drying I took a chipboard flower shape and traced it onto pink felt and cut that out, and then looked for a pretty button. Once the glitter was dry I took a round piece of scrap cardstock, glued each petal into place, then glued on the felt flower and the button. I love how the whole card turned out, but especially the flower!



I have to tell you, I just love making my own components for cards! I don't have the budget to go out and buy all the latest and greatest things that all the magazines, websites and blogs are always telling us about, and even if I did, I'm not sure I would spend it all on craft stuff! But! If I use my creativity (and after all, what is crafting but being creative and using what we've got on hand!) and put some time and effort into it, I can come up with something just as pretty as all the ready made stuff. Maybe even prettier!


What are your cost-cutting craft tips? Would you be interested in a blog where we shared our tips and ideas for saving money by creating our own things and how to use them? Let me know what you think; I'd love to hear your comments! Blessings friends! Becky