A challanging challenge...

I'm going to try hard not to ramble here... I have a lot to say about this one little card but most of it I'm sure won't be interesting. Still - consider yourself warned ;)

Kristina Werner's blog is one of my favorites and with her latest video she issued a challenge: Make a one-layer card using only stamps. You can take a look at her card here. This is not normally something I would even attempt, but I figured it would be something fun to try for my new blog. Here's what I came up with:

Well... now that it's done, fun is not necessarily the word I would use... I've had Hero Art's What's Perking stamp set for a couple months now and I've never been able to figure out what to do with it. So for this challenge I was determined to use it. I was going to make a Mother's Day card using the teacup stamp, and it was going to say "Take time for you." But the "take time for" part of the stamp set is really small, and I don't have any large alphabet stamps that I could use for "you." So scratch that idea. I created a little scene that I liked with the coffee pot and mug, and then found another stamp set that had a sentiment that I liked. The circle border is from Sassafras.

This challenge was kind of embarrassingly hard for me. I rarely do this much stamping on one card, and it took me three tries to get it right! I'd get halfway through what was turning out to be a great card and the next stamp would be crooked or uneven and I'd have to start all over again! I vastly prefer stamping on individual elements so I don't end up ruining the entire card. And I made my card a little more like Kristina's than I would normally have liked. I really like how she layered the stamps, so I decided to try the same technique. I may try to make a stamps-only card again using a different format.

And in conclusion... I think I'm ok with paying extra postage and standing in line at the post office to have stamps hand-canceled. :) If I do want/need to make one-layer cards, I think I'll try it with patterned paper adhered straight to the card base and without large three-dimensional embellishments.