making this card involved scrubbing an entire wall of my kitchen

eta sunday morning: WOW!!! i am honored and completely flabbergasted to be in the FAB FIVE!!! having said that, i feel like this card came out of the blue & had hardly anything to do with me...i am just proud to have gotten it out of my head and onto paper! thank you ever so much kazan & 2S4Y!!! ♥♥♥ (ps: you guys--you HAVE TO go & see the rest of the cards...seriously...WOW!)


the one just over the sink...in order to remove the paint splatter...from the (unsuccessful) watercolor background essperiment. it was a bit non-triumphant, actually, and i was somewhat disheartened. but then i remembered the FLOWERS!

i'd seen them earlier in the day, in this post on iris babao uy's blog. she was showing off the new prima "innoscence" flowers (yes, it is spelled that way; no i don't know why) which come only in white so they can be sprayed, inked, painted, misted or...whatever...to get a custom look. and i said to myself, "hey lauren! you could probably dip/splatter/smear watercolor paint onto any light colored fabric or paper flowers!" and seeing as how my sink was already full of smears, blobs and puddles of watercolor paint in various shades of blue, it seemed like the perfect time to test this hypothesis.

so i did.

in retrospect i realize it would've been a good idea to photo the flowers on their own after painting, but as soon as i saw them, i mentally imagined them as the stars of a card made based upon kazan's sketch 47 from 2S4Y:

and i mean, i suddenly saw the whole entire card, like a snapshot: the flowers, wonkily concentric circles of bling & stitching, the corrugated cardboard, the swirls of wire. only the chinese newspaper, the leafy ribbon and...believe it or not...the bird (!) were not present in my "vision". other than that, i promise this was 95% complete when i saw it in my head:

(patterned paper: my mind's eye & current + bits of chinese newspaper, corrugated cardboard & notebook paper; kraft cardstock: bazzill; bling circles (re-colored w/copics): heidi swapp; bird clipart: anahata katkin; flowers: vintage silver and tiny purple flowers from michaels, both painted with various shades of blue watercolor paint. copper wire & millefiori beads from a beading store; ribbon: may arts; ink: ranger; rub-ons: american crafts; adhesives: hot glue, tombow mono runner, 3m foam tape, mini gluedots, sewing machine)

all i had to do was make the thing, which i did almost feverishly, in case the idea should evaporate completely whilst i worked. luckily it didn't, and i was able to pull all of the ingredients together quite quickly. by far the longest step was figuring out--after i had everything arranged--how to attach all the various bits and in what order.

the background papers & chinese text are machine stitched. the copper wire is wrapped around the corrugated cardboard, twisted around itself, and then both are attached to the card with hot glue in the center, and staples out at each end. the circle is reinforced with a bit of thin chipboard, hot glued onto the corrugated cardboard, and propped with two layers of foam tape under the bit that overhangs the background. the flowers, beads, and leaves are tacked at strategic intervals with mini gluedots, and anchored more securely with dabs of hot glue anywhere i was able to hide it.

at the very end i added a rub-on sentiment and a little swirl...and called it a night! yep. totally worth cleanin' that wall. :)