A Circle Tagged and Something Scrunchy

If that doesn't make you pop over from your Google Reader or RSS feed, I don't know what will! Yesterday my Stampin' Success magazine came, and it featured a 3" x 3" card using Circle Circus. The unique embellishment, accessory, element, whatever you want to call it that it included was a metal edge circle tag. A light went on in my head--"I have some of those!"

I went to my craft room, played for awhile, and this is the result. I made myself use the new InColors because I knew if I didn't, I probably wouldn't, and I want to like them. I made it easy on myself and chose the three Earth Elements colors of Crushed Curry, Soft Suede, and Dusty Durango. The CC is really good in small doses, I think, because it's a pretty green yellow. The SS is yummy, and also has a bit of a green tinge to it. I think it's my favorite so far. DD looks like Really Rust to me.

I stamped the largest circle with the flowers directly onto the tag, which has a vellum center just for this purpose. It didn't jazz me, though. So I repeated the inking with DD and stamped it on Whisper White card stock this time. Then I stamped the largest flower on the circle again and colored it with CC and colored another flower on the circle in SS. I cut out the CC flower and popped it up on stampin' dimensionals.

Then I looked around my desk for something to coordinate with this focal image. I have some dotted printed window sheets--which are carrying over from the Occasions Mini to the new catalog!--and thought that that would do nicely! The card size is 2 7/8" x 11", so although I could've used an entire sheet, I just didn't want to overwhelm the design with this element. I cut it in half, and that was just the right amount of visual interest that didn't compete with the focal image.

One of the newest fads in ribbon use is a sort of shabby chic look that's a messy pleat that's sewn onto the card. I don't have the InColor ribbon yet--it's a cool thing this time around; dotted on one side and solid on the other!--so I tried my hand at replicating the look using card stock. It was a little trickier than I anticipated and came out looking more scrunchy than pleated, but I'm pleased with how it turned out, and it's fun to look at AND fun to feel! The card stock used was CC, and the strip was just .25" wide. I achieved this look by folding, very randomly and not all that successfully, and then going back and putting mono adhesive on the back to make the pleats stick to each other. I secured the strip with glue dots.

The sentiment is stamped in SS on DD, a second strip only .25" wide. It's from God's Blessings, and I used the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig to create the sentence and to selectively edit the original message (to fit the space constraints).

What do you think of these new colors? I know you're probably getting tired of this set, but it's all I have from the new catalog, and I also want you to see how many ways you can make one set work! Am I succeeding? Hope so...