Thanks a Latte

My uncle & his wife spent a few days visiting with my mom & me this week. One day we went up to Dallas, where my brother and his wife live. After an afternoon of sightseeing, the 4 of us met up with them for supper at a local steakhouse. Quite unexpectedly, my brother paid not only for him & his wife, but the four of us as well! So I made this card to give to them as a thank you.

I turned to Operation Write Home's Sketch #249 for my design:

After cutting a piece of white cardstock to 2x3", I placed 2 of the stamps from Fiskars' "Latte Love" stamp set to judge positioning of my image and greeting. Remarkably, they fit perfectly! So I stamped both using Color Box Chestnut Roan chalk ink. I colored the coffee mug and steam with colored pencils, using Gamsol on a paper stump to blend the colors.

I pulled 3 patterned papers that were on my desk, left over from other cards. I wanted a bit of a vintage vibe, but not frou-frou. I chose a ledger-type paper for the background, and a blue with a slight visual texture for the long strip towards the left side of the card. I punched nine 5/8" circles from one piece of double-sided patterned paper, and glued 8 of them going down the card, 3/8" in from the left edge of the background piece. Then I glued down the blue strip, slightly overlapping the circles. I matted the background and my focal panel with a mid-tone brown cardstock, and glued the ninth circle peeking out from behind the focal panel. Finally, I glued the focal panel in place, and matted the whole piece with a dark brown cardstock (the only thing I didn't pull from my scraps). I adhered the completed card front to an A2-size card base, and I was done! This has got to be one of the fastest cards I've ever made--about an hour from start to finish. Everything just came together, like it was meant to be!

I'm entering this card in Operation Write Home's Sketch #249 challenge.