Love and Care for PPA

Well...it seems the long weekend is over...hard to believe!  Why does time off go by so much faster than time at work?!?  The past three days have flown by...but then I've been mighty busy!  The weather was better than forecasted and so I got a lot of gardening and yard work done.  Our backyard is still a swamp from all the rain we've had, but I did manage to get my patio pots planted and it looks great!  Now for a little patio weather and we could actually say summer is on it's way!  In addition to all the yard work, I made some headway on my course and still found a little time to stamp.  After being buried in assignments on the computer, getting down to my stampin' corner to put ink to paper is like a breath of fresh air!  The card I have for you today is inspired by the Stamping 411 colour inspiration for this week:  always artichoke, river rock and rose red.  Now those three colours are not ones I would typically put together, but I am actually quite happy with the result.  The layout for this card is from this week's Pals Paper Arts sketch:

 

Here is my card:

Card for PPA 94 using Love and Care level 2 hostess set.

Close up of focal images and vellum butterflies

Inside of card

You may be wondering when my love affair with this stamp set will end...keep wondering!  I just love the softness of the images and am having fun playing with them.  This card really just sort of came together because of the images I was using.  Here is how I put it together:

Starting with a river rock card base, I ran it through my Big Shot with the vintage wallpaper embossing folder.  I sponged the edges of the card base with river rock ink.  Setting that aside, I stamped the stem image randomly on a strip of always artichoke cardstock using ink of the same colour.  All the images were stamped off once to keep the background subtle.  I sponged all the edges in always artichoke ink.  I then punched a strip of rose red cardstock using my dotted scalloped ribbon punch.  I cut it to 5 1/2" and then adhered it to the top edge of the artichoke strip.  I then took a piece of rose red seam binding ribbon and pulled the threads to gather it.  I adhered it along the bottom edge of the artichoke piece.  I then adhered the whole thing to the prepared card base.  For the focal images, I stamped the stems in river rock, both full strength and stamped off, the flower in rose red, stamped off and the leaf in always artichoke stamped off.  I stamped the images randomly all over a scrap of very vanilla textured cardstock and then punched out three 1 3/8" circles.  I sponged the edges of all the circles and then layered them each on a 1 3/4" scalloped circle punched out of rose red cardstock.  For added interest, I notched every other scallop with my paper snips.  I adhered the circles to the card using dimensionals.  The final touch was the butterflies that I cut from vellum paper using my beautiful wings embosslit and my Big Shot.  I sponged them lightly in rose red ink and then adhered them using glue dots.  I added some little pearls to each one.  

You may be wondering where the sentiment is!!  The answer is that I left it off.  I made this card with the intent of sending it to a colleague who is recovering from back surgery.  I thought the simple "Take Care" on the inside would suffice.  Speaking of the inside, it is pretty easy to figure out what I did.  The sentiment is stamped in always artichoke, full strength on a scrap of the leftover images from the front.  I punched it out with my large oval punch and layered it on a scalloped oval.  I again notched every other scallop.  The rest you can figure out from the photos.  

I can't wait for you to see the card I have for you tomorrow!  I made it for my son's friend who is having a birthday party this week.  It is such fun...stay tuned!!