HELLO ECHO

Oh my, I LOVE it when that happens! "When what happens?" you ask me. Well, here's my story.

Yesterday I was sorting through a pile of stuff that had been in that particular location for quite some time, when I came across this orange-y strip of die cut hellos. All of a sudden, my mind kicked in. (I always love it when THAT happens also! It's sort of rare.)

A couple months ago, while getting ready for my monthly Stamp-In Workshop, I needed a series of die cut hellos. So I just kept cutting them from a single piece of paper. For some reason, I was halfway neat about doing it. As I finished up at the Big Shot, I was ready to toss the leftover piece in the garbage. But, I caught myself. I was intrigued with the neat row of the word "hello". So I set it aside with the intention of doing something with it some day. 

Well, as they say, out of sight is out of mind. 

Until yesterday when it came into my sight once again. I was in the middle of doing something else, but I broke off from that to make a card with my Hello Echo.

It came together just like MAGIC! Everything fell into place just right. 

And I am truly delighted with the result!

The strip of hellos is actually wider than I ended up using. I trimmed it so it was just a panel. I had trimmed the right side first, but then realized that if I trimmed the left side also, the whole thing would fall apart. Well, that certainly wouldn't do. So I didn't do any cutting on the left side. Instead, I covered up the remainder that I didn't need with a strip of pretty Designer Series Paper. 

One of the main colors in this particular sheet of DSP is Crushed Curry. So I grabbed a piece of matching ribbon and wrapped it around the DSP before I adhered it to the card front. (It is the 3/8" Mini Chevron Ribbon on page 199 of the current catalog, now discounted to $5.60 since it is retiring.)

I wanted to do something a bit different with the rest of the ribbon piece. So, I came up with this nifty finishing touch using the same ribbon folded in half, and gathered and bow tied with Crushed Curry Baker's Twine. I just glued the little embellie to the flat piece of ribbon.

I am always horrified when the components of a card are divided exactly in half. When I looked at my finished card, I realized that this one came pretty close to doing just that. Too late to tear it apart. But how to fix this serious faux pas? I decided to rectify the situation with a thin strip of the Calypso Coral used in the Hello Echos. 

There. A much better, more asymmetrical look.

Does anything like that ever happen to you -- you set aside a piece that you accidentally created when doing something completely different and thought would make a good addition to a future project, stick it away, and totally forget about it, until one day you come across it again, and immediately set to work turning it into a "masterpiece"?

Hello

Smiles.