Keep Being Creative – September Challenge – Day 5, September 5 2020
I’m part of a Facebook Group – Queen & Co. Royalty – which is for fans of Queen and Company products. If you can’t tell from my previous posts, I’m a big fan! I started following them about four years ago after discovering their classes at a Creative Keepsakes Convention in Portland, OR. Their products just keep getting better and better!
They’ve had a lot of new releases this year and started sharing new ideas and sneak peeks in their Royalty group on Tuesdays when everyone had to stop going to in person shows and events. When Tami or Ginger get online with us, they generally issue a challenge. These challenges help people like me, “Keep Being Creative,” to do just that!
When we first started quarantine and I was working from home, I had to convert my small craft room into my home office. After a full day of work, it was hard staying in that room and finding an ounce of creativity. But I needed creativity for my outlet, I was miserable! I vowed to make a change and do at least one creative thing a week.
For many years, I have toyed with creating a Craft Blog, but dragged my feet. More on this story later. Tuesday’s with Tami was born and with that the challenges started. This helped me do at least one creative thing a week! What a blessing!
This week’s challenge was issued by Ginger Williams – try die cutting something you haven’t before – I loved the light look that vellum gave on Ginger’s example card. And from my first post, I was still thinking about how I could do monochromatic more justice. I had this really light seafoam green cardstock and loved the airy look, I thought it would pair perfectly with the vellum.
Originally, I envisioned a scene of flowers, leaves and clouds with a sentiment embossed on vellum. Yeah, right! It was a flop. A huge creative let down. But we have to learn from our mistakes, so I’m going to show you the mess I had in front of me.
It’s so bad! Glue shows through vellum, it also curls when you glue only part of it. I tried to run it through my die cutting machine to flatten it, only to squish more glue out the sides because, guess what? Vellum doesn’t absorb glue! And to add insult to injury my die cut plates are very old and tons of marks and tiny cuts of paper came off the plates and stuck to my vellum. It was – as Cathy Zielske says – a HOT MESS!
Oh, and in this photo those bottom sentiments seem fairly legible, in person, they are not. I obviously have a lot to learn about heat embossing. I don’t know what it was. The quality of the embossing powder? The stamp being too small? The font not being spaced enough? I really don’t know, so if you do, please leave me a comment! Help me fix my embossing folly!
Since the heat embossing looked rather horrible, I thought, hey, I have a Tim Holtz Distress Ink color close to this paper, I’ll just stamp the sentiment without embossing. Well, that doesn’t work great on vellum either. So I ended up hand writing over it. The only markers I had handy were alcohol based, you guessed it, more green blob. So then I wrote over it with a fine tip Copic marker I had in black.
This was NOT what I had envisioned for my lovely ethereal card. But I wasn’t about to give up! I still wanted to use that color and I still wanted to use vellum. So I went back to my Queen and Company foundation dies, and I went back to my embellishment stash in my Scraprack. I found the perfect match in these Queen and Company flowers. They are thick and very hard, but I can always hand deliver this card. And the white centers coordinated well with the Queen and Company white glitter adhesive foam.
Sometimes, accidents are happy accidents. And even if your first vision doesn’t work out, Keep Being Creative! Something better might come of it. I love the sweet simplicity of this card. I wouldn’t have gotten here, if it weren’t for making a few mistakes along the way.
If you ever get stuck, go back to the basics. Try it again. Don’t give up. Keep Being Creative!
MATERIALS:
Queen and Company – Foundation Dies
Craft Smart – Seafoam Greens 12×12 Paper Pad
Queen and Company – Glitter Flowers Green
Queen and Company – Fun Foam Neutral
Queen and Company – Sheer Glue
Recollections – Clear 8.5″ x 11″ Vellum Paper
Accent Opaque Digital – 120lb. Cover Smooth