New Years Dreaming

I was cleaning up my sad, neglected studio space last week when I came upon this square of cool die cut paper. I also found a bunch of art stamps that I love and will try to use this year. I want to get back to setting my artsy fartsy side free more often. I loved my time on design teams, but I'm really looking forward to this new season where I am not beholden to anyone and can just create for the joy of it.

While I was on design teams, I bought product I liked from other companies, but because of my commitments, I never seemed to find time to use what I bought, and I experienced guilt for buying something I didn't really need when I was getting so much for free already. It was a viscous cycle. I haven't bought very much stamping materials, aside from a few digital images, in almost 2 years. I am determined to use up what I have before I buy any more. That means everything you see is at least 2 years old, and I'm sure some companies are no longer in business, but I'm not sure. I've had my head in other wonderful places which make me extremely happy and haven't been keeping up with what has been happening in the stamping sphere if influence. I hope to have career news I can share at the end of this month.

I finished this card and felt it was a little plain, so I added green adhesive rhinestones to bling up some of the spaces. I like the effect. I had tried to use this die cut paper a few different times, and it never seemed to work. I realized it is a focal point by itself and using it with pattern paper was taking away and causing visual 'strife'. The green paper is from an older Anna Griffin pad that I found as I was cleaning up. Beautiful pad! I like it now as much as I did when I got it a couple of years ago. And it is the perfect paper to work in harmony with this strong die cut paper.

This is a great sentiment, and I still like it. HOWEVER, I think it would look better if I had overstamped an interesting texture in green, or a soft neutral. The sentiment is quite large, and I'm not often comfortable with that much empty field space.

Thanks for popping by! I hope your New Year is filled with abundant blessings.

stamps; sentiment (stamp oasis)
ink; tuxedo black memento (tsukineko)
paper; francesca collection (anna griffin), ivory die cut (unknown), walnut creme, kraft (bazzill)
accessories; classic rectangles (spellbinders), rhinestones (kaiser), ribbon (SU!)

pile it on - just because
die cut divas - make it glitter
creative card crew - anything goes
totally gorjuss - ribbon
brown sugar - ribbon
delicious doodles - layers