August 3, 2011

I Love Being Spoiled


Here's some Taffeta ribbon inspiration for you. I've made this lovely purple number for the gorgeous challenge over at Jay Gee's Nook - always a favorite of mine.


DEEtails:

People often ask me how I manage to pull an inspiration card together, so I'll try to walk you through it a bit today. If you want more details, check out a post I wrote about inspiration pics a while back. If you find this helpful or totally boring (or somewhere in between), please let me know, so I know if I should do posts like this again in the future.

Whenever I start with an inspiration card, I have to be INSPIRED by the inspiration image. I know that seems obvious, but I want to emphasize that I don't participate in every inspiration challenge and it's not because I don't have time... I only play along with the ones that really inspire me.
How do I get inspired? Well, I try to draw several elements from a picture that speak to me - basically, the elements have to be something I like (or sometimes even LOVE) as well as something that I think I can recreate or have embellishments that sort of fit.

In this inspiration challenge, I was drawn to three images towards the bottom of the card... 1) Those pretty petals on the pillow in the bottom left reminded me a bit of my crepe paper Ruffle Flowers. 2) Also notice those doilies (second from the bottom in the center) which I can't resist - love! and 3) The intricate pattern on the bottom right told me to add a little bit of a scalloped detail to my card.

At this point, I don't have any idea of what my card will look like, only that I'm actually interested in making a card inspired by this picture... Of course, I know that I have to stick with the colors of the inspiration card, so I start by pulling out some cardstock - Elegant Eggplant, Perfect Plum, Wisteria Wonder, some Whisper White, a bit of Basic Gray. Notice that I don't use ALL these colors... I just pull them out to know what I can work with. I decide that Wisteria Wonder doesn't quite work here, so I put it aside. Having the colors out helps me to think through how I want to combine the elements and colors for my card.

Now I start thinking about my inspiration elements and what I can actually do with them. I recently created a gray crepe paper Ruffled Flower, and I think that would work perfectly, so I pull it out. Dark purple doilies aren't something I have on hand, but I have some white doilies and I find some large lavendar doilies, which might work. I can also stamp some with SU!'s Delicate Doilies set, so I pull those out. And lastly, a pretty scalloped detail is something I can easily make with the Scallop Edge Border punch. I play with my elements a bit, tossing out the idea of using actual doilies since they don't quite work with my Ruffled Flower. Remember, that this is a process, and pulling things out and putting them back are just part of the process.

I decide on Elegant Eggplant doilies stamped on Perfect Plum card stock, so I start stamping a background. I want to tie in those dark doilies with my Scalloped edge, so I punch the border on some Elegant Eggplant card stock. I need something to blend those edges together, so I pull out some Perfect Plum Taffeta which looks absolutely gorgeous with my Ruffled Flower. I want a sentiment that allows for a good amount of gray to show at the bottom (to tie in with my gray flower) as well as balance my big bloom, so I choose the cute Thank You sentiment from SU!'s Afterthoughts and ink it with some Basic Gray. I add a Perfect Plum button, tied up with some gray and white Baker's Twine to finish things off... and Voila! There you have an inspiration card! :)

So tell me... what do you think? Helpful? Total bore snore? Should I go through the inspiration process more often? Are you inspired to start making your own inspiration cards? Do you wish I'd stop typing already? *Giggle*

See you tomorrow... Same place, same time! :)

4 comments:

  1. OMG, this is awesome...I love purple its my favorite color also!!!!
    Thank you for sharing.

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  2. Beautiful card Nina. The ruffled flower you made is fantastic and thanks so much for sharing your process... it is always interesting and helpful to hear what other people do. Thanks so much for playing along again this month at Jay Gee's :)

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  3. Thank you for walking us through the process. I'm going to give it a try! I still believe you have a natural gift for design. Deelightful card :)

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  4. Fabulous card Nina! thanks for playing along with us this month ... cheers Ange

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