Inspiration Plus!

I love a good challenge!  I can usually find one to jump start my creative juices over at Splitcoast.  Today's post started out with Saturday's Inspiration Challenge from a company in Asia that makes saris.

I was struck by their bold colors, but there was one that with soft off white, ecru, pearls and sea foam green that inspired me to make this card from an old Stampin' Up! set called In Full Bloom.  My flower is a bit more saturated than the inspiration picture, but I was focusing on shading the flower and concentrating on the light source, shadows, and providing contrast.  I have learned to stamp two or three images when I color to allow me to experiment and not worry about making a mistake.  Overall, this one came out well, and I liked the relative simplicity of the card composition.  (The deepest color paper was "as is" from my scrap drawer - gotta love that!)

I didn't stop there, I colored other daisies in pink, yellow and white.  Here are two more - one was finished using this week's Splitcoast Sketch Challenge layout and the other is happily sitting in my stash of cards.

This sketch challenge card used paper from my scrap drawers - always happy to use that up!  Don't you think the yellow ribbon adds a nice touch to the card?  Design-wise, I'm not sure why, but it almost has a "cherry on top" element.

The last card for today was stamped on "damask" patterned paper and then colored. Papertrey Ink's soft stone collection of patterned paper is used here.  Love those polka dots!  I am a sucker for anything polka dot.

By the time I colored this flower, I felt satisfied with my shading (and the light source) - this time I needed to focus on contrast so everything in the daisy didn't blend together.  I knew when I started coloring that this card would be finished in a combination of gray, white and yellow.  The scrap drawer gave me the yellow paper behind the daisy (from an old SU DSP pack) and then trusty Stampin' Up! gross grain dotted ribbon brought it all together.

I have the day off of work and it's another frigid MN day - so I may just spend another day reenergizing myself coloring and making cards!