Spring Garden Goodness

Morning all!

I'm back with a card that certainly did not go according to plan!

I'm not sure about you, but every so often the card I end up with bears little to no resemblance to the original idea I had in mind.

It can be frustrating, as these projects have a high chance of ending up in the bin...

I think today's card worked out OK, but it was definitely touch and go!

It all started with my plan to use the large die in The Greetery's Print Shop Garden Goodness set.

I've had the full Garden Goodness set of supplies since it was originally released, but hadn't yet managed to use the main coordinating die that cuts out all the stencilled elements in one pass.

So, I cut the die from an A2 panel of white cardstock, then stencilled and stamped all the steps onto the die cuts while they were still held inside the A2 panel on a low-tack cutting mat.

The plan was to go with bright spring shades and to then mount the die-cut elements on a dark contrasting background.

Well, I tried every shade of cardstock I had to hand, and it just wasn't working for me.

So I grabbed some Wheat (kraft) cardstock from Concord & 9th and thought that would do the trick, surely the elements would pop on kraft with a little dimension behind them.

Nope, things were still looking too flat, and by now everything was glued down. I was tempted to use the Garden Goodness Layers die to change up the colours of some of the elements, but I'd just washed the stencils and they were still drying...

So out came the white gel pen and I really went to town, adding dots and dashes galore.

That definitely created a fresher look - but also a very busy background.

However, a busy background is often the perfect way to incorporate a nice bright and bold sentiment like the Scripty Hello die from The Greetery.

This is a really handy sentiment die that includes the shadow element and can be paired with other greetings, such as the spring sentiment I stamped on one of the PreText Banner dies cut from rustic white cardstock.

But this card was still needing balance, so I mounted the A2 panel on Peacock cardstock from Concord & 9th and that basically rescued the card!

I luckily had a larger postage die in my stash that added a nice border to the card and brought everything together.

Phew! Hopefully my next project will go more according to plan...

Until next time, happy crafting!