Embellish Magazine Challenge - Jeweled

Hi folks! As part of my challenge to myself for 2012, I decided to try to participate in more card challenges. So I stumbled upon this challenge today over at Embellish Magazine.

The challenge was to create a card or project using not only the color scheme in the inspiration photo, but also to incorporate some kind of jewels or bling into your project. Here's the inspiration photo:

Such pretty colors! Those are colors that make me drool all the time, whether together or individually. In fact, I'm wearing a shirt in that lovely aqua color this morning, so it was meant to be. :-)  (I used PTI Hawaiian Shores, White, and Soft Stone paired with SU Wisteria Wonder and Pool Party).

I decided to bust out my Upsy Daisy set from Stampin Up and make a tiled flower scene. I had done a card similar to this once before, but it had been a while, so I thought it was about time to try my hand at it again. I stamped the flower image 3 times using VersaMark, once each on a different colored card stock background, then embossed the image with white embossing power. Then I cut each image in thirds, and selected one tile from each color to reassemble into the original image. As I had 3 sets of images to work with, I rearranged them 3 different ways for 3 different looks.

This first card is very bright and cheerful and makes me think that it would make a nice wedding card. I just love the colors together. I added a few pearls at the base of the large flowers and used my diamonds impression plate (PTI) for a white-on-white matting to complete the look.

The next card I wanted to be bright and cheerful, so I used a silver matting for the flower tiles, and set that on more Hawaiian Shores to really make the brightness stand out. Matted that on Soft Stone on a white card base, added some bling and a vellum sentiment strip, and voila! I also added some Stickles lavender pearls to the base of each blossom, but I'm not loving that, so pretend that's not there, OK? In fact, I don't love the vellum strip, either. Maybe I'll remove that and stamp right on the Soft Stone card stock.

And lastly, I wanted a card that would be a bit more somber, something that could be used as a sympathy card. I set my flower tiles on Smoky Shadow (although in the photo it appears black) and matted that on Wisteria Wonder which has a lovely greyness to it. The card base is soft stone so that it wasn't too bright, and a few simple rhinestone brads add the finishing touch.

So there you have it. Three cards, all with the same colors and images, but arranged in ways that make the overall effect of the cards very different. This was a really fun project to try and I'm happy with the results. Each card has a very different mood and evokes different emotions from me, which is exactly what I was hoping to accomplish. I'm going to pat myself on the back for this one. Maybe Hubba Hubba Hubby can pat me on the back here, too. :-)

Happy weekend!