VA Beach Swap Card #1

Since I'm busy finishing up preparations for Sunday's Spring Boutique/craft show event, I thought this would be a good time to post some of the swap cards I made for last weekend's SU! Regional Seminar in VA Beach. In addition to the 30 full cards I made for the SCS dinner, I made 100 cardfronts (25 each of 4 designs) to swap on Saturday. I got some fantastic designs from other great stampers. I love to see what other people come up with for their swaps. I always get ideas for new techniques and fresh ideas for "old" stamp sets.

This card uses elements of two cards I created before using this set, You Make Me Happy. I used the flower placement/panel from one design with the layout of another. I'm really happy with the way this card came out. The small flowers were stamped in Ballet Blue Craft ink, then heat embossed with Crystal Clear embossing powder. The texture on the stamped image has a great look and feel when it's embossed and I wanted to highlight that. The big flower was stamped using the rock and roll technique. The flower panel is layered on a Bashful Blue panel with distressed edges. The one problem with this design was that the card had a LOT of little pieces to cut and assemble--and keep track of. I pre-stamped all of the pieces for this card (and my other swap cards) and took them with me on my trip to my family's beach house in Delaware in late March. Since it was too cold for the beach or anything else outdoors, I used the time to assemble my swap cards.

Materials Used (all from Stampin' Up!):
You Make Me Happy stamp set; Almost Amethyst, Lovely Lilac, and Certainly Celery Classic inks; Ballet Blue Craft ink; Almost Amethyst, Bashful Blue, Certainly Celery, and Whisper White cardstock; 1/2" circle punch; small corner rounder; white grosgrain; silver brad; crimper; Crystal Clear embossing powder; dimensionals; distressing tool