Swirled Masked Background - Stampin' Up! Swirly Birds

  I know I'm not the only stamper who gets inspiration while I'm out and about shopping.  But I love it when the inspiration comes right to me in my mailbox.  I find some great color combinations in bedding catalogs all the time.  The inspiration for today's card is actually from a real card that my son received as a thank you from his teacher.  It's a neat color combination but also reminded me of a technique that I hadn't used in a while...masking.

  Here's the inspiration card:

  And here is the card that I designed:

   I really liked how the background was filled in with the large overlapping flowers but I didn't have a floral stamp set that had the right look so I pulled out Swirly Bird and figured that the swirls were a good substitute.  I stamped the larger Mint Macaron flowers onto a 4 inch square piece of Very Vanilla.  I stamped about 6 more swirls onto scrap paper and cut them out to use as masks with some repositionable adhesive.  You can use sticky notes for the masks as well so you already have the adhesive to keep them in place but I find that they tend to curl up after being used a few times and as I was using this design as a class project I wanted a bit more use out of each mask. 

  Once the masks were in place I stamped the smaller solid circle in Soft Sky and then stamped the swirl over the top in Dapper Denim (I love this In Color blue!). After removing the masks I used the paper trimmer to cut the panel roughly in half.  I didn't measure or line anything up; I just put it on an angle and cut.  I adhered the 2 pieces to the Mint Macaron card base.

  Next comes the butterfly detail.  I wanted to put a sentiment on the front and the center of the butterfly is just the right size for some of the smaller phrases from Sunshine Sayings.  In class we stamped and embossed with the new Copper embossing powder before cutting the butterfly to make it easier to line up the die.  Just make sure you give the embossing a chance to cool off before running it through the Big Shot so it doesn't smear.  We then cut a second butterfly in Very Vanilla and adhered it behind the Dapper Denim one with dimensionals to give the butterfly a bit more weight and depth.  The Dapper Denim ruched ribbon tail was added using tear tape.

  Definitely keep your eyes open to all the inspiration that comes your way each day and turn it into a card!

  Thanks for looking!  Did you stamp today?

Stamps: Swirly Bird, Sunshine Sayings

Ink: Mint Macaron, Soft Sky, Dapper Denim, Versamark

Paper: Mint Macaron, Very Vanilla, Dapper Denim

Accessories: Bold Butterfly framelits, ruched ribbon, copper embossing powder, dimensionals