CoronaCrafts - He's pretty, but...

I took a blogging break this weekend because a) it was gloomy and being productive when it's gloomy is just impossible, and b) the craft theme of the weekend was FINISH THINGS!

Here's the first of the cards I finished:

I used a the Collage Windows die from Scrapman as a mask and inked over it, then stamped Monsieur Coeur from Carabelle Studio, and added a sentiment with a stamp I had custom made a bunch of years ago.

This is not a complicated card, but I got stuck on it the other week for a stupid reason.   After I inked and stamped the main panel, the card wanted to be 4-bar size (about 3.5" x 5"), rather than A2 (4.25" x 5.5").  I wanted to use a frame die for the panel so I had 90º angles everywhere, but I convinced myself that running the panel through my diecut machine with an A2 die twice, or using my paper trimmer, which produces only mostly clean, straight lines, would fail and I would ruin everything and the world would crumble and disaster would ensue.  I mean, it's possible that I would have ruined the card panel, but in the calm view of many days later, I could have just remade it, right?  This is a thing I have to remind myself of over and over again.  In this case, I threw money at the problem instead.  I found a set of Lawn Fawn 4-bar frame dies and ordered them.  They arrived Friday, and worked perfectly for the card.  The world was saved.

One of the best parts was that after I made this card, I had the inked die I'd used as a mask nicely colored and ready to use on another card.  I went for even simpler this time, adding just a small sentiment from Mama Elephant's Tres Amigos in one of the die openings.

Tomorrow:  Fun with stencils.  Eventually.