Today I am super excited to show you a very unexpectedly successful monochromatic color scheme I came up with and I think it's just perfect for a card! First, let's take a look at the card:
I say “unexpectedly” because when I was making this card I really wanted to add another color to the blue and white and wanted to keep this card a teeny bit in the masculine range because it was going to a couple. Because it already had flowers on it, I felt like I needed to stay away from pinks and yellows. I happened to have a piece of black card stock on my table (from the awesome Halloween Series I have starting next week!) and it sort of “fell” onto the card front. I saw that it added some grounding to the card so I went back and fiddled around and came up with this.
But I didn't just want a black strip down the center so I had to add some more black in there somewhere. I had already stamped my greeting and didn't really want that in black anyway. So what I did was try a black speckle image under the greeting (in case I hated it) and thought it was OK. Added a few more and – Voila! – it looks pretty good. Here's a closer peek at the speckles:
Just a few, here and there, add more grounding an pull that black strip together.
I also used that striped ribbon because the stripes reminded me of the outlines on the flowers.
In this view you can see how the flat part of the ribbon band works really well with the flat images of the flowers. Then just adding that single bow made with the 10 Second Bow Maker adds just enough dimensional detail to make the card special.
Remember this post where I talked about how I chose this set because of the greetings? Here's another one that I just love because you can use it anytime you want to acknowledge a long relationship. I made this as an anniversary card but that greeting could be used on a card memorializing someone, too. LOVE this stamp set!
One last feature I want to share. When I showed this to a friend she asked my how I got my bow “through” the greeting. She thought that the ends of the ribbon were pulled through the greeting panel and then tied. I love experimenting with placement of ribbons and bows and never realized how interesting an effect placing the bow on a panel OVER a ribbon would look. Play around – you never know what you can come up with! You can sort of see that effect here:
If the Beautiful Bouquet stamp set is growing on you, you are not alone! People are snatching this up because of those amazing greetings so you will be in exceptionally good company! Here are the other products I used to make this card:
This is a good reminder to always be experimenting because you never know what you will come up with. If I hadn't had scraps all over the place I might not have discovered this killer monochromatic color scheme!
