From the French Cafe

Unfortunately, no, I am not in a French cafe. That's just how I think of this picture. It's from Stampin' Up!'s retired set Travel Sketchbook.

This will also be the start of NEW STAMP WEDNESDAY! While I wish that meant buying new stamps every Wednesday, that will not be happening. But, I will focus on a different stamp company every Wednesday. We'll see how long I can keep that up. I'll start today with the obvious. Most likely, all of you are aware of Stampin' Up! You can buy their products thru your very own Stampin' Up! demonstrator (nope, I'm not one of them). I won't go on about this particular company any more, since most of you already know.

I did this card for the Featured Stamper Challenge on Splitcoaststampers from last Sunday. I used this card by HB (Carol) as my starting point. I liked the fold with part of the inside showing on the right and the sketchy watercolored image.

So here's how I did my card:

Stamps: SU! Travel Sketchbook, French Script, and Carte Postale for the "Merci"
Ink: Black Stazon, Handsome Hunter, Basic Black; and for watercoloring: close to cocoa, creamy caramel, going gray, sahara sand, so saffron, real red, handsome hunter, garden green
Paper: Real Red, So Saffron, watercolor paper
Other: ek success circle punch, SU word window punch, paper piercer and template, gingham ribbon and vintage eyelets. The big brad is from JoAnn's and the bit of hemp is from a ball of twine.

I stamped my French Cafe and watercolored it with an aquapainter. The saffron layer, I randomly stamped with French Script using Handsome Hunter, also smearing some ink around with a sponge. The saffron circle and Real Red also got "the smear treatment". Merci is stamped on a scrap of watercolor paper then punched twice with the word window punch. The second punch was to make it shorter. The big brad went into the Saffron circle, so I could then tie on the hemp. By the way, I actually unraveled the hemp and only used one strand of it so it wouldn't be so bulky, a little more delicate. I taped down the right half of the saffron circle so the top of the card could still tuck into it. Pierced the corners of the red. Put in the brads and ribbon. And put it all together.