Today’s post is something new for me.  I have loved making cards ever since I was a little kid gluing doilies on Valentines.  Now in the age of the blog-o-sphere, I follow a bunch of fun paper-crafting sites that give me lots inspiration and ideas for all sorts of things, not just cards.  Sometimes they have crafting challenges to inspire you to stretch your creative muscles.  I’ve found it a bit intimidating, never sure if my photos or designs are quite good enough to compete but I decided to give it a go and challenge myself to try something new. So, taking inspiration from two challenges, I am diving in.  Over at Runway Inspired Challenge (I absolutely love the melding of fashion and paper-crafting going on here by the way), the idea was to design a card based on this spring fashion:

While the challenge over at Moxie Fab World, Challenge #49 from Creative Card Challenges Week: was to create your own background paper.

So, drum roll please, here’s what I came up with:

For the background, I took my Rubber Soul rain stamp and Brilliance Starlite Black to create my patterned paper on my all-time favorite shimmery cardstock: Curious Metallics White Gold.  Now, I am generally one to just eyeball things when it comes to stamping, but for creating a background I used my stamp positioner to get it just right since for a background you have to line up the stamp over and over.  Then, using a little scrap of a floral-patterned washi paper that’s almost like vellum (sadly, the photos don’t do it justice), I stamped my little Amuse Art Stamps Tiny Butterfly (no longer available alone but new version here) in Fresh Ink Turquoise and Pool.  After adhering the butterfly panel, I then stamped Sending Love from Seattle by Impress in Turquoise over the top of both and embossed it using clear embossing powder.  A little of the powder stuck to the raindrops so I ended up deciding to embrace this and filling a few in with Diamond Glaze for that true glistening rain effect.  And last but not least, two little pale blue gems for some extra sparkle!

Here’s a close up of the raindrops:

I think it sort of embodies Seattle at the moment…suffering through the onslaught of winter rain so that eventually we can find the colorful butterflies of spring.  What do you think?  How’d I do with the two challenges?  Have you ever entered a crafting challenge?