Off Centre

Well, I guess we can all come out from behind the sofa now, as the dreaded acetate challenge over at Less is More is over lol!  This week’s challenge theme is much more amenable .. in fact I found ideas were starting to whirr around in my head as soon as i saw the challenge post :-)

I absolutely love Tatty Teddy, so I was thrilled to discover that Papermania have brought out a new range of “From me To You” stamps and accessories. I actually went into my local craft shop for something different altogether, but two stamps and a paper pad somehow fell into my basket and I had paid before I know what had gone on lol! When I got home, I knew straight away that I wanted to use one of the stamps for this week’s Less Is More theme of Off Centre – he naturally sits to one corner of the card :-)

I decided to paper piece teddy’s umbrella – I’m not sure whether it was entirely successful as the stamp has dots on it as well as the dots on the paper … but I still think it looks ok. I felt that my Whiff of Joy sentiment was perfect for this image; but the part that has made me feel really pleased with myself is the idea I had after I had already completed my image and sentiment stamping … I drew some lines of fine dots and dashes with my glue pen and dusted them with glamour dust, to create a shower of sparkling rain from the sentiment to the umbrella. I so hope that you can see it in the pics! For some reason even though I have photographed this card in bright sunlight it still looks really grey!

Now I know that Chrissie and Mandi will probably say I should lose the gems in the corners … but there is actually a  reason for them being there this week. I stamped onto very smooth cardstock so i could get a good image and use Promarkers without experiencing “bleed through”, and then mounted it onto a fine border of coloured card.  However the card is so smooth that it shows every lump and bump of the tape beneath – a bit like putting a flimsy dress on if your figure isn’t fully toned lol! I found that the teeny gems just drew the eye away from any imperfections in the cardstock mounting.  I could tell you that there is an arty reason for having my single gem in a different colour from all the rest – but actually I was one gem short and determined to go ahead anyway … so i decided to use a clear one for my single!

Recipe:
Main image: Papermania “From Me To you”, coloured with Promarkers and paper pieced with paper from same range;
Sentiment: Whiff of Joy;
Supplies: Papermania pink and clear gems.

Challenges:
Less is More #12 – Off Centre
Allsorts #100 – April Showers
Totally Gorjuss #77 – Bling It On!
ABC – S is for Sparkle

Back later with a card covered in paper / flowers / ribbons / pearls ;-)