I am thrilled to be a new member of the Poppystamps design team. Before I was even asked to be part of this team, my collection of Poppystamps products was already large. I am excited to be able to share with you as part of the Poppystamps team.
For my first card, I wanted to say "hello" and I combined all of my favorite things. I love autumn. I love groupings of dies. And I love clean and fresh cards. (I don't call them "simple" and I'll explain as I give you more details on this card.) Clearly I also love Poppystamps products - with a special place in my heart for the Whittles! The Whittle Squirrel was a last minute addition to what was supposed to be an elegant card - and I think they totally make the card!
I am a very visual cardmaker. I have a general idea in my mind, but I still have to cut and try and move and change often dozens of times. I don't know if it is like that for everybody; probably not given the volume of cards many cardmakers create. Luckily I like the process, plus I typically end with a variety of scraps to try on my next card. Nothing is adhered at this point until I am completely happy with what I am seeing.
Of course I cleaned up quite a bit before snapping this photo but you can see that I tried different colors for the squirrels. I also tried a gray sentiment, pearlescent green leaves, reddish-orange leaves, plain golden leaves, clear sequins and yellow gems. And that's not even getting into the various layouts that I played around with.
When I finally have everything together in a layout that I like, I snap a picture with my phone. This helps to adhere everything later. There are other methods of keeping an arrangement of dies together to glue it down, but I like doing them one at a time because I am a huge fan of dimension so I have to adhere these in a certain order. Here's my phone photo. Everything is in an order that I like, it seems balanced, I even planned the "hello" over the pumpkin. And this is why I don't call then clean and "simple" cards - the details can make a difference!!
Now it is time to adhere it all. I like dimension - it can bring a card alive. It's kind of hard to tell with this one because the phone photo has so many layers of dies, it looks like it already has dimension but I want to keep that when it is glued. After the stripes are down, I adhered the leaves but only at the end so that the tops can pop up. Then I use different thicknesses of dimensional dots. The label and the pumpkin are on a thinner dot and the squirrel is on a thicker. (Did you happen to notice that I changed my mind after my "final" phone photo - I just had to add the baby squirrel!)
I do love dies and the detail on these particular dies is fabulous. I look forward to many more cards with Poppystamps!
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