Going International

My house was actually quite bilingual for the last few weeks, as we played host to a German exchange student. He was a very nice boy, and a very talented musician, and it was quite interesting to get to know him.
That's my lead-in to a card honoring France -- it's the best I could do, aside from noting that this week's Teapot Tuesday Challenge was all about France.  I used the current Card Patterns sketch (#158) to create my card, and I ended up making it an odd size, to fit what used to be known as a "letter envelope"  or roughly 6 /14 by 3 1/4 inches.
The Eiffel Tower is black-embossed on white card stock, with blue ink (SU Blue Bliss) sponged pretty heavily around the edges.  The sentiment is also black-embossed.
I had seen a really cool embellie made with a button and twine, looped to look like a flower, on a card at SCS. That inspired my odd little blue and white embellie here -- it's not as nice as the inspiration, but it is an interesting little do-hickey, and it let me get a little blue down at the bottom of the page.

CAS not so simple for me

Clean and simple doesn't normally come naturally to me, at least when it comes to card making. My husband always says I'm a "minimalist" but it doesn't seem to translate to cardmaking, where I agonize over everything.

Not this time, however.  The challenge for There's Magic in the Air was to make a "less is more" or CAS card.  I used the CAS sketch challenge from SCS, and this card came together in record time.

The branch (Autumn Leaves)is stamped in versamark and the sentiment (source unknown) in SU Mauve Mist.  Two of the butterflies were punched from a scrap of printed paper, and the green panel is mounted on the same print. I'm not sure the purple butterfly is the perfect color, but all in all, I'm pretty happy with this quick card.

Not a shamrock in sight

This tag is for two color challenges, the Monochromatic Green at Really Reasonable Ribbon (RRR43) and Green, White and Black at Victorine Originals (VO29).  I know when someone suggests green cards in March, you're supposed to do St. Patrick's Day, but I have no appropriate images and don't really get inspired by leprechauns (no offense to those who do -- I have seen plenty of fabulous St. Patty's Day creations!).
I decided to make an Asian inspired tag instead. The images are from Hero Arts and Inkadinkadoo. 
The bamboo is clear embossed on the green tag. I stamped the lanterns on a multicolored paint chip (so I could get several greens that worked together), cut them out and strung them on baker's twine.  The symbol/sentiment is matted on black and placed on top of a piece of ribbon that I folded into a point. The black ink is StaZon on the lanterns and Memento Black on the other. The edges of the tag are sponged with Versacolor Bamboo ink.  I added a green eyelet and tied a variety of green ribbons and fibers to it.

Butterly on vellum

When I planned out this card, it was going to be black and white with a pop of colored vellum. But the B&W paper I planned to use didn't work, and I found this in the same pack. So ... the card sort of went in a different direction. (Isn't that what stamping is all about?)
This is the current Card Pattern Sketches (CPS255) layout, although I made it vertical instead of horizontal.
Image is by Inkadinkadoo. It's stamped and black-embossed on an orange vellum that's matted on white. The printed paper is from Making Memories.  Silk flowers and orange mini-brads finish it off.

Sort of a collage

I really shy away from doing collage, but this card sort of ended up collage-like. It's not quite what I envisioned when I started, but I'll call it a learning experience.  I did end up using some materials that are a little unusual.
The sketch for this is the current one at Card Patterns (#155). I stuck pretty close to the sketch, simply using an oval where they had a circle for the butterfly.
So, what's so unsual about these materials?  The butterfly is black-embossed an a paint sample card, and the backgkround is a page torn from a very old thesaurus (one I keep around only for the purposes of crafting.) There's no sponging on that -- that's real live aging. The butterflies are punched from vellum -- not unusual, for sure, but I haven't used any for a long time. Actually the butterflies are two layers thick; they were too pale with just one layer of vellum.
Details: Small butterflies by Impression-Obsession, large one might be Stamps On Fire.  Martha Stewart Seam binding,