Magazine Monday

Yep, running a little late.... okay... by several hours late. But with good reason.

I'm usually 'one of those' who can look at a design and know exactly what I want to do... and have it work the first time around. This week, when I needed it to, was not the case.

I went to my magazines for inspiration last night and found a layout I thought would work. It was a cute and simple card. So I set to work putting it together. I hated it. Yep, I couldn't bring myself to even photograph it, let alone post it to the blog. So I called it a night.

This morning began Bob's last day home before he leaves for 3 weeks. Try as I might, we just can't seem to NOT have to go anywhere on his last day. It always means last-minute errands. So before I could go back to the card, we had to leave the house for the day.

As soon as we got home (about 2 hours ago) I headed back down to the studio, put last night's card aside and pulled out a new magazine for inspiration. The very first card I spotted was the one I knew I wanted to do and it came together in 10 minutes.

I went back to the Spring 2006 issue of Take Ten and found a card called Solo Shoe by artist Clintine Steele. You can see her on FB at Bean Up The Nose Art.

Clintine's card was a 4.75 x 6.5 laying horizontal. She used a black and grey polka dot pattern on white paper, edged with black on the top and bottom as her base. Across the center she put 2 red squares and one black one as the second layer. Then the solo shoe image went on a white rectangle, stamped in black. She colored the bow on the shoe in red and used a black pen to apply a dot border around the edge of the mat. A very basic and elegant card.

To create my version, I flipped mine vertical, used SU black CS for the first mat and a scrap of pink dot patterned paper for the 2nd mat. My center mat squares were from a red oriental patterned scrap and SU black CS. I stamped one of the heart images from the new Hero Arts 'Untitled Hearts' stamp set with Memento Tuxedo Black on baby pink Valu CS (I'm trying to use it up and get it out of here). I added a black satin bow. I wanted something a little lighter but the satin was all I had.

I like the way this one turned out though I think next time I'll use a slightly smaller image so more of the black mat square will show at the top and bottom.