Dance with Who Brung Ya

I mentioned previously that I had agreed to make a set of cards to donate to Operation Write Home.  I made many cards, some of which were fall and Christmas themed.  I have heard both that it is too late to donate seasonal cards to OWH and that it is not too late.  I figured I would err on the side of caution because I had been asked to make general themed cards and because I can always use Christmas cards myself.  So I set those cards aside and sat down to make some more cards but the creative muse would not come to me….

I hemmed and hawed over different ideas but nothing seemed appealing.  Then I decided that when in doubt, go back to what carried me in the past, or as my husband would say, “Dance with who brung ya.” 

My card style became very predictable.  There would be a card base, a sheet of patterned paper that covered almost the whole front of the card, the image would be fairly large, sometimes matted but often not and then there would be the embellishment of choice.  Since I was trying to keep these cards fairly bulk free the embellishment of choice in this case was ribbon with bows.  That worked well since I have a box of ribbon scraps within reach of my desk.

Penny Black is an old favorite company of mine.  I don’t tend to use them as much as I used to and I have sold many off, but I still have my favorites to play with.  When I first started making cards my embellishment of choice was indeed this cheap ribbon (rolls used to be 29-cents often on sale for 4 for a dollar and they come in a variety of colors).  I would wrap the ribbon around the patterned paper cheater style with only the ends tucked under.  The bow is separate and glued down.

 

My predictable style does change with the trends.  You can see here I went crazy and added rick rack to one of the cards instead of ribbon.  When fibers were all the rage, all my cards had fibers hanging off the card down one side or tied along the top.  When eyelets were all the rage these cards would have eyelets in the 4 corners, sometimes on the patterned paper, sometimes on the piece with the image, and sometimes just in a line.  It was the same thing with brads.  I went through a button phase, a stick-on ribbon phase, a shaped eyelet phase, an embroidery floss phase, a punched shape phase and others.  All those work with my basic predictable style.  So when you don’t know what else to do, dance with who brung ya.

Here’s one last card where I was running out of steam and only had a little piece of patterned paper to work with.  It still works and it has the latest trend on it: bling.

The Fine Print: all images by Penny Black, “Hello” by Stampendous, “Happy Birthday” and “I love you” by A Muse Studio, “Smile” by Inkadinkadoo, patterned paper from a variety of sources but not DCWV except for the water, scrap ribbon, scrap rick rick, stamped in Memento and colored with Copics.