A set of thank-yous...

As I begin this post, I realize that I never finished talking about all of my new things.  But as there are always new things, no doubt I will return to that topic by and by.

A couple of weeks ago I needed to make about 20 thank-you cards.  As always, when I'm going into mass production mode, I try for something that's nice looking, simple, uses supplies I already have, and easy and fact to replicate.  And, as always, I have mixed success with this.

I started by looking for ideas on my Card Ideas board on Pinterest.  The image that grabbed me was this card by Shelly Starkis which uses a stamp from Stampin' Up (which now I want to acquire - hello, Ebay!).

I knew I had a stamp that was pretty close to the one in Shelly's card, so after looking through my stamp catalogue, here's what I pulled together:

The focal, vaguely organic image I settled on is from Magenta.  The little Thank You is a new stamp by Endless Creations.  I can't remember which of the two inks I chose.  I suspect it was neither of these but a Marvy dye ink, probably in Plum (it being me and all...).

I tried several different iterations of the card before I got it to a version I was happy with.  It's amazing how this concept of trying something many times before getting it right is new to me in the realm of rubber stamping.  Rather than trying something once, having it look bad or iffy, getting frustrated for not getting it right the first time, feeling extremely uncreative, and then abandoning the project, I gave myself permission and time to have an iterative process.  Of course, this only works when I have sufficient time to work on things, but still, progress...

In this first attempt, the image was too dense and too close to the penciled border, but I liked the scale of the sentiment and the frame.

This portrait version was better, but I really wanted to go for landscape with the cleaner image, lack of over-stamped shadow images, and the wider border.

This last attempt is just about there, but still a little to visually crowded at the bottom.  I wanted more breathing room for the sentiment.

Here's a blurry version of the final card.  I masked off the bottom of the floral image to create a crisp, straight line and leave some white space.  I inked over the pencil border, leaving a gap for the sentiment. 

Here's the pile of finished cards!  I love the simplicity of the image, even if it does lack the delicacy of the stamp used in my inspiration card.

I find it happening more and more that I take a card I find online and try to recreate it, or use it as a jumping off point for my own images.  I definitely have a mixed success rate doing this, but it pushes me to try different things, and gets me out of the place where I have so many possibilities of cards to make and stamps to use that I fall back on organizing my products or working on my stamp drawer maps and make nothing new.  In another post I'll round up some of my card inspirations with my versions.

What are you making these days?