Many Thanks

First of all, don't forget to show me your toilet paper card. I'll be choosing a winner from the comments on THIS thread tomorrow (Monday, 4/14/08)!

Long ago I labeled myself an admitted copy-cat. I take ideas from SCS, friends blogs, magazines, and the Stampin Up Catalog. From there I tweak colors, design, layout and images to suit my taste. So tonight, I thought I'd give you a little example of this. . . .hope it's useful.

Let's say this was the card I found in a catalog (it's really not, I made it. . . but let's pretend). Not my usual colors and not completely crazy about the stamp on the bottom right. So I usually mentally make note of the design but for your benefit I've actually drawn out the template.

Here you see each element in a slightly different color. I've changed the square with the sentiment to a circle, but as you'll see in the samples below it's not a hard and fast rule, just guidelines.

Here I simply took the template and two coordinating colors, and the Delight in Life stamp set. . . pretty simple.

I mixed it up a little more here, looking for extra notions and adding the ribbon (It was driving me crazy that the other card didn't have ribbon).

For the next card, I simply rotated the card and left the layout as-is (like I said before it's just a suggestion, don't stress about getting it perfect!).

This is probably my most favorite. . . . and if you look closely you can tell that it's the same layout just rotated.

When you get in a slump, or are looking for card ideas try to view the sample cards you look at with a good bit of imagination and very little perfectionism. Don't have the stamp set, no big deal! Use one you have. . . don't like the colors? Change them! The one thing that drew me to stamping (and keeps me coming back) is that your creativity has no end. There is no right way and no wrong way. You do what is comfortable and visually pleasing for you!


Some people may not like my style, and I'm sure I've seen cards out there that I won't be copying any time soon, but that's the beauty of any art. . .


as always, thanks for looking!