CYP Challenge # 137 ~ Use Your Scraps

There's a wonderful challenge at Craft Your Passion Challenges this week, one I could play in forever. It's use your scraps and my scrap box runneth over! I am always delighted when I find a new way to use scraps because I have so many. My pile never seems to get smaller. I think my cats make more when I am sleeping and think I won't catch on that they are playing with my stuff during the night. Anyway, that's a whole other story...

For this card, I coloured a  sweet Stitchy Bear Digital Stamps image called Tea Time. My husband and I join our 82 year old neighbour one night a week for tea so I know exactly where this card will find a home. I coloured the image with Prismacolor pencils , adding Black Stickles to the centers of the flowers on the top cup and black acrylic paint dots to the centers of the flowers on the bottom cup. I also added two sizes of black half pearls beside the words. The image was cut out using a Spellbinders die. The bottom mat used the same die for tracing the shape before fussy cutting.

The pieced background is a fabulous technique called herringbone background which I learned from Beate Johns, who is a card-making rock star IMO. You can find the tutorial for it here. I have used it to create entire backgrounds like on this card or to create a smaller piece to layer. It's quick to do and so effective. I matted the pieced background on solid black cardstock. A second rectangle of the same black was added across the middle with a piece of black and white washi tape on top of that. If I don't want the background colour to show through, I first adhere the washi tape to white cardstock and then trim it to the width of the tape. It gives you a more opaque colour which is sometimes the desired look. To finish the card, the image layer was added to the  background with foam dots to add dimension and create that interesting shadow.

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you'll join our challenge this week. I need all the ideas I can get for using my scraps and I know you have lots of inspiration for me. Speaking of inspiration, drop by the Craft Your Passion Challenges blog to check out the projects by the rest of the DT. Great ideas there!

I am entering this card in the following challenges:
Dream Valley Challenges ~ Anything Goes Challenge 45
The Squirrel & the Fox ~ Anything Goes Challenge 31
Inspire Me Fridays Linky Party 85 ~ Anything Goes

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie