Hello--Faux Flair

Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday challenge blog has been having their "Clean and Simple" challenge this past week. I had about 40 minutes the other night, & decided to make one more card for the day, to send to Send a Smile 4 Kids. I had seen a tutorial by May Flaum as part of her Supplies on Hand 2014 class, where she used journaling cards to create a grid design for a scrapbook page. She suggested you could scale it down, and use a similar design for a card. I combined that idea with Carissa Wiley's instruction, in this video, on making faux flair, & came up with this "hello" card.

I chose 4 complementary patterned papers from my scrap stash as the base for my card. After die cutting each one with Lawn Fawn's "Stitched Journaling Card" die, I laid them out on the front of a 4.5x7.25" cream card base. Once I had the arrangement as I wanted, I adhered the papers, trimming off the overhang with my scissors.

For the flair, I stamped the "hello" stamp from Simon Says Stamp's "Sending Happy Thoughts" on white cardstock, using Hero Arts Pool Mid-tone Shadow ink. (This happened to be the same stamp Carissa used in her video.) I stamped over that again with Versamark (a feat easily achieved with my MISTI tool), and heat embossed it with Recollections Clear Detail embossing powder. The heat embossing was probably not necessary in the end, but it didn't mess anything up, either, so I didn't redo the stamping. Then I punched that with my EK Success 1" circle punch, and adhered a clear epoxy sticker by The Paper Studio to the front, creating my "faux flair."

Because the flair was a bit small in relation to the card front, I die cut navy & yellow cardstocks, using 2 nesting scalloped circle dies by Lifestyle Crafts. I layered them, and glued the flair on top. Finally, I glued that to my card front, at the intersection of the patterned paper pieces, and this card was done!

I'm also entering this card in Virginia's View Challenge #14: "Layers and Dimension."