Howdy Partner - Stampin' Up! Barnyard Babies

When I saw the the Paper Players current challenge pop up on my Bloglovin' feed I was like no way am I going to be able to play with this challenge.  Western?!?!  This born in New England, living in Virginia girl has zero western themed stamps.  How do you do a western theme card without boots, or cowboys or cactus?  Seriously.  A true challenge here.

  I didn't delete the challenge from my feed and kept coming back to it.  Bingo!  I had an idea!  I dug through my sad pile of card parts (a whole stack of parts and pieces of cards that didn't make the cut but were still too good to toss) and found a little horse that I had colored with alcohol markers testing out some colors before going with a different color for a birthday card for a friend (I'll show that card another day).

  Next I pulled the Hardwood background, Be the Star stamp set and Soft Suede and Cajun Craze inks and papers.

   I used the RetroSketches challenge for my layout and just started stamped and adding and removing items until I got what I thought was a pretty good card for not having a western themed stamp set.

  The base is Soft Suede stamped with the Hardwood stamp with the same color of ink.  Then I layered a length of burlap ribbon, a strip of Cherry on top DSP Bermuda Bay paper (I was thinking this kind of like turquoise jewelry) and a piece of Fancy Foil Designer vellum in gold.

  I stamped a large star in gold ink onto Cajun Craze paper and used the matching star framelits to cut it out.  I dug through my ribbon scraps and found a piece of gold baker's twine that I wrapped around the star.

  The horse is attached to the star with dimensionals.  I stamped the banner using the Alphabet Rotary stamp.  I googled some western/cowboy sayings and found this website that had some great saying that made me laugh out loud! The ones further down the list are the best! True words of cowboy wisdom! Most were too long for the banner so I settled on plain old Howdy.

  On the end of the banner I added a Vintage brad with a Bermuda Bay candy dot on it to tie in more the "turquoise".  Why didn't I use Tempting Turquoise you might wonder?  I didn't have any Tempting Turquoise DSP.

  All of the layers are sponged along the edges with Soft Suede ink for a rustic weathered feel.

  I like how this one came out and it felt good to get something off of my card parts pile as well as the ribbon scraps.  So moral of the blog post; don't through away card parts and don't overlook a challenge just because you don't have a certain kind of stamp set!

  Thanks for looking!  Did you stamp today?

Stamps: Hardwood, Barnyard Babies, Be the Star, Alphabet Rotary

Ink: Soft Suede, Gold

Paper: Soft Suede, Very Vanilla, Cajun Craze, Cherry on Top DSP, Fancy Foil Designer vellum gold

Accessories: gold baker's twine, burlap ribbon, Antique brad, candy dot, Stars framelits, alcohol markers, dimenisonals