PINK AND WHITE CHALLENGE

IMAGINE this scenario: 

You are handed a 4" x 6" piece of cardstock decorated in a wild (to you!) pink and white pattern with a white 1" border on one edge. One side of this identically-patterned piece is in landscape format, the other in portrait. 

Now, you are challenged to take this piece of cardstock and base a card on it. 

Gulp.

This is exactly what happened to me the other day.

You see, awhile back I picked up from the Stampin' Up! Clearance Rack one of the Project Life Card Collections. I figured that at a teeny price tag of $6.38, this would give me LOTS and LOTS of possibilities for one-of-a-kind cards. The card collection comes with 100 cards in the assorted sizes of 4" x 6", 4" x 4" and 3" x 4". All of the cards are two-sided, giving me actually 200 choices for cards.

On days that I need a little extra dose of inspiration, a pick-me-up or some Creative Therapy, I open my box and randomly grab a card. No matter what I think of this random choice, I MUST go ahead with my creating, choosing one of the two sides to utilize.

So far, I have made five cards this way (no, you haven't seen any of them yet). A couple times, the challenge was no challenge whatsoever; I was able to happily go right to work. Unfortunately, twice now, I was completely stumped with my random choice.

This pink and white card was one of those occasions. I actually set it aside for about an hour, busying myself with something else in the meantime, until finally I came back to it, and decided to dig in to my challenge. After all, that is what a challenge is, right? Challenging??

Initially, I had intended to make it a completely pink and white card. But, when I decided to make my focal flower using the Botanical Builder Framelits Dies (page 26 of the Occasions Catalog), I dearly wanted to add one of the scrumptious leaves. And not in pink.

Here is the card I finally created:

I'm in love.

To get the 2-layered tag, cut two tags, the white about 1/4" shorter than the pink layer, using the Scalloped Tag Topper Punch (page 165). By overlapping these tags, you obviously lose the hole at the top, which, in this case, is quite alright. If you want to use it as a tag, just use a hand punch to create a hole. 

I LOVE the dimension you get with these flowers! 

For the leaves, I could have had even a little more interest by stamping their counterpart stamps before die cutting them. But, I had decided that there would not be any stamping on this card whatsoever. A.N.D., besides,I felt there was quite enough interest in that flamboyant background piece already!

A Candy Dot (page 161) in the center of the flower was just the right amount of green to coordinate with the leaf.

And then, I was left with that blatant white space! Oh my.

I tried a few options, none of which tripped my trigger even a little bit.

So, I echoed my green in that embellishment by cutting with the long leafy piece, and making it look pretty much like the die itself. I did this by cutting along the "embossed" line you get when you die cut this piece.

The movement and grace in that vast dead white space provided by this diecut turned out to be the perfect choice.

When you know you would benefit greatly from some Creative Therapy, and don't have a particular project in mind, how do you go about getting inspired? 

I actually have a few options. 

The latest is the random choice of these Project Life cards. 

Otherwise, I go to the drawer where I store my stamp sets and blindly reach in to pick a set. That is the set I must use to base my creativity on.

Years ago, when I planned on starting this blog, I went through all the cool projects and techniques I had earmarked for forever, and typed a reference number along with the description to match, and printed this list out on my computer. I then cut these ideas into strips, and dumped them all in a Clarks shoebox. When I need a pick-me-up and have no inspiration, I -- once again -- blindly, pick out a strip of paper. I retrieve either the book or the magazine page or printed instructions that matches my selection, and that is my assignment.

Dumb, huh?

What can I say? At times, I'm just a random type of girl. And it works for me.

So, what works for YOU??

Random

Smiles.