Blue Inspired Card

I was going through my Jan/Feb Paper Crafts magazine the other day when I came across the article Cure for the Winter Blues and I came across this beauty from Betsy Veldman on page 43:

As soon as I saw it I was inspired to use my Butterflies and Birds clear stamps from Inkadinkado and I would be making two as thank yous and one as a birthday card.

Here is how mine turned out:

Betsy's card is 4x6 while mine is 4x51/2 so I only used four stamped images instead of nine and I matted each of my stamped images and added all four to a large mat on vanilla cardstock.



Here is how I made each of the bird squares:

I stamped white cardstock with the script stamp inked with Tea Dyed Distress Ink. Next I inked each of the bird stamps with Faded Jeans Distress Ink and stamped it over the text and quickly poured clear embossing powder over the stamped image and used the heat gun to melt the powder to give the image a raised texture. Before cutting the images out I inked them with Antique Linen Distress Ink then cut out each of the four stamped images and using Creative Memories 11/4" square punch punched out four blue squares to mat each image.

Here you can see the script in the background. Embossing the birds helps make them look like they are in the foreground.

After matting the bird images I cut a larger mat out of vanilla cardstock and adhered the four images one fourth inch apart. I inked the edge of the vanilla cardstock with Vintage Photo Distress Ink then adhered it to brown cardstock.

I chose to use Thank You as my sentiment and stamped it with Versa Mark Ink and used white embossing powder to emboss it. I thought using white embossin powder would stand out better then black against the brown cardstock.

I used a 1/4" strip of vanilla cardstock, inked the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, adhered it to the bottom third of the card. I then tied a piece of metallic blue floss around the strip and through the button.

Although the cards are similar there are several differences aside from the fact I used a different stamp set (although we both used Inkadinkado) :

My card is slightly smaller.

Betsy used two different shades of blue on her stamped images and I only used one.

I matted my images twice before mounting them on the large brown cardstock.

I used a narrower strip of paper across the bottom where the button goes.

One card down two more to go. I am thinking on using a green mat instead of brown on one of the cards since the person I will be giving it to likes green. That is what is so fun making cards for people you know you can match the card to them. The one that is going to be a birthday card will be blue because the person who will be receiving it loves the color blue.

So how do you make cards? Do you make a bunch of cards with no one specific in mind or do you consider the likes and dislikes of the people you make cards for?