My Mom used to tell me that if there was an easy way or a hard way to do something, I was more likely to pick the hard way. I’m not sure what that really says about me. Okay, maybe I do over-complicate things sometimes (my friends are probably laughing and nodding right about now).
On Monday, I showed you how to do the fabulous Inlay Diecut Technique (you can read about that here). A friend of mine, Poli mentioned to me tonight that you could get a very similar look with a lot less work. Instead of doing all that die cutting and piecing it all back together, she suggested that I only die cut the outline and then use my actual die to trace around the outside edge of my pattern paper and just adhere one large piece behind the outline. I said that it wouldn’t be the Inlay die cutting if I did it that way. And she said no it wouldn’t but it would look just as nice. Because I do things the hard way, I had to give it a shot myself to see how it would look. Here’s the card I made using Poli’s idea:
I agree! It is totally faster to do it her way. It took far less time to trace around the entire die and hand cut one piece of pattern paper. I did have to do a little trimming here and there but overall it looks pretty good. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two techniques.
You can see in the Coral flower, the outline lies on top of the paper. Whereas with the Pink, the pieces are flush together. Both look great though! So if you don’t have time to do all that Inlay work, this is a quicker alternative.
On to the card I planned to share today…
The Rose Wonder stamp set has the same exact image as the Rose Garden Thinlet die. I did struggle with it just a bit trying to figure out how to use such a large focal image and then still have room for a sentiment. It’s a big flower. I stamped the Rose with my Archival Black ink pad and then I watercolored the petals and the leaves using Daffodil Delight and Pear Pizzaz. If you’re going to watercolor your rose, be sure to use the Archival Black so it doesn’t smear when you get it wet.
I tried and tried to fit one of the sentiments from the stamp set on this card, but I just didn’t like how much of the rose it covered. So I used my “hello” from the Hello You Thinlets and stapled it to the Gold Foil Vellum paper tag. I included the gold ribbon behind the “hello” to make it stand out a little more. I Love that you can still see the rose behind the vellum tag.
Tonight’s lesson: when your friends give you advice, take it!
Speaking of advice, don’t forget to click that Order Online button on the right and get the Rose Wonder stamps and Rose Garden Thinlets set so you too can make your own rose garden! (And if you spend $50 pretax and shipping, you’ll get to pick one free item from the Sale-Abration catalog.)
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