Polka dots, ribbons, pins and PLAID?

Today was an interesting day to say the least. My parents picked Alex up bright and early to go 4-wheeling on the local trails. They were gone almost all day. Craig had to work today so he stayed out of my hair too! What a wonderful day. I created two cards today, well, finished two cards today.

The first card was created for the teapot tuesday challenge on SCS. The real reason I play along with these challenges lately is the destination station posting that accompanies it. This is where the cards will go. Last Tuesday it was a hospital and we sent all sorts of cows and animals for the kids in the burn unit. This week the cause hit a little closer to home. We all sent our cards to a fellow SCS'er who is having a most horrific year. Nothing seems to be going right for her, she is having the same kind of cloudy days I have been. So I most certainly was going to play along, make the best card I could, and try to bring a little bit of happy to this woman's mailbox.

Isn't this just the cutest sewing card you have ever seen? Well, I think sew. I used one of those dollar stamps from Michaels and stamped out those pretty little dresses (one for each of the girls in the MMTPT105 story) and colored them with colored pencil. That stitching detail behind the dresses is another stamp and there is a little secret hiding in those stitches... that is stamped more than once and neither image is the entire thing... confused yet? What I did is overlap the image off the yellow cs so the end of the image was in the center (to hide under the yellow dress) and then reinked the stamp, turned it over, matched up the ends (sorta) and stamped the image.

I created the sentiment and sentiment banner using the computer. I used pink for the font because at this point I realized there was no other pink on the card except for the dress. So pink it was. I trimmed out the banner and glued it down to overlap the yellow cs just a bit in the center.

I have had this ribbon for at least 6 or 7 years and finally, FINALLY, finally found a use for it. I attached a stick pin with a few beads by threading it into and out of the ribbon. That polka dotted background was a scrap and I thought it was a very lucky find.

Ok, now that the good one is out of the way, I'll introduce my less than favorite card of the day. The technique challenge this week was using plaid, not just finding plaid paper, but actually creating plaid on a sillouette stamp. I tried this technique at least a dozen times, threw out at least a dozen tries and almost gave up on ever making something I liked. I was chatting with a friend via email and she just said I should DO IT!

Here is what I created using the plaid technique.

 It is an interesting technique and I have seen many fabulous designs created in the SCS gallery, but not a technique I will probably ever use again.  In the end it did "turn out", but not without struggle. I even titled it so appropriately as: Plaid and I have been fighting for days...

SO TRUE!

To learn more about this plaid technique, you probably shouldn't ask me cause I'm not so good at it.