The “Winter Blues” Butterflies

We have had some snowy, grey days lately. Even though I got some fabulous new Stampin’ Up stuff for Christmas, I was feeling a little blue and uninspired. For inspiration, I found a few challenges that intrigued me. The general layout of the card is from CAS(E) This Sketch #305.  Every week, I stare longingly at all the beautiful clean and simple cards, knowing there is nothing “simple” to designing a CAS card. These are, by far, the hardest cards to design. It is easy to have “WOW” factor with glitter, sequins, 6 layers, ribbon, dry embossing, heat embossing powders, foil paper…I could go on for hours! But to let the ink and stamps shine, to let them do all the “WOW”ing?? Very difficult.  I went through 10 pieces of card stock, multiple stamp sets, many different colors, and hours of my time.  To help with limiting my colors, I looked to The Color Throwdown challenge ctd526. The blue and aqua, with white, was just the color palette my “winter blues” needed. I did indeed first see snowflakes, but I am kind of burnt out on snowflakes (6 inches outside, too many snowflake holiday cards). Color challenges really help me focus on a few colors, instead of being overwhelmed by all the colors at my fingertips. I went with Blueberry Bushel and Coastal Cabana for the blue and aqua. In scrolling through my Bloglovin’ page, I came across the Just Add Ink challenge to “Just Add Something New”.  I was excited to try out the new Butterfly Gala stamp set, so this was the perfect impetus to do so! I tend to gravitate towards flower stamps when I need some simple images. But I didn’t have any “new” flower stamps that were working with this design. Staying focused on “new”, I finally got to the butterflies, and I am in love! The two step butterfly images allowed me to focus just on Blueberry Bushel and Coastal Cabana. I sponged a little Coastal Cabana lightly over the area where the butterflies are stamped. The Coastal Cabana butterfly insides are stamped off once to get a lighter aqua hue. This card has made my “winter blues” take flight, along with those pretty little butterflies!