One Month Anniversary!

All Our Dreams - Lili of the Valley

Blogging for one month already - and I am right around 700 visits and seven followers!  It's been so much fun and served as a source of motivation to get back to making cards.  Thanks to everyone who has visited my blog - old friends and new.  I really appreciate the comments and the support.

Today, I'd like to share three different cards from the same stamp . . .
It's from a lovely company called Lili of the Valley (over in the UK).  All of their images are adorable, and they are easy to order from.

You may remember this card from my first-ever post on January 21st.  I loved coloring this baby and putting the card together.  Since then, I have colored that baby two more times.  I can hardly resist the sweet face of this baby!  It makes me think of holding my grandbabies as they slept in my arms.

My second card used the same rectangular shape of the focal image, but I used a more interesting SU! tag die and then my "outside the box" technique to move the leaves and the blanket outside of the rectangular border.

Today's moms aren't as enamored with pastels, so I used gray and coral as my main colors.

Copics:
skin - E000, E00, E11
blanket - W0, W1, W3, W5
leaves - YG 21, YG23, YG67
pinks - R 20, R22, R 24, R29
bunny - Y11, Y13, Y24
R000 is used to shade around the image

I used the Sweet Sunday sketch challenge to design my third card.  My first instinct was to zero in on the baby again.  I was going to have the circle in the background behind it,  but I changed my mind as I created the card.

I didn't have to worry about keeping it simple, so I added different touches to balance the card and hide my mistakes!

Let me share two of them with you . . .
•My brown circle isn't perfect - the paper moved as I was cutting - solution:  1 1/4" brown patterned paper across the bottom and the baby's circle on top.

•The baby was cut as a rectangle, but I changed my mind and wanted it to be a circle - solution:  tape the rectangle onto another piece of paper, recut it into a circle, add the sentiment and ribbon to hide the spliced line.  (You have to know what you are looking for on the real card to see it!)

Giving myself permission to experiment and "play" (rather than be perfect) takes me in new directions all of the time!  It's such a wonderful aspect of the creative process.