Friday, March 22, 2013

leave it in neutral!

we're headed into our second week of the awesome and challenging "neutral noel" prompt at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ suggested by our lovely guest star noelle mcadams. so we're still eschewing color in favor of the neutral shades of the palette, such as white, cream, beige, brown, charcoal, grey, black, gold, silver and copper! (for the record, we consider those metallics to just be "blingy" neutrals!) there are lots of ways to go with this, but an approach that almost always works for me, when i'm either deprived of color or need to use hues outside my comfort zone, is to go monochrome and load up on texture; so that's what i've done this week. i chose all white, since making such a card for my aunt judie has become an annual event!

(patterned paper: pink paislee; transparency: hambly; flowers: prima; border punch:  easy cut; other: vintage eyelet lace; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine. quick note about how i attach lace/ribbon: i don't like the way many trims unravel when cut to fit, but sometimes i'd prefer not to see them INSIDE my card... so whenever possible i will wrap lace around a panel before attaching the panel to my card; to do so i use a tape runner to lightly secure the trim on front and back of the panel, stick the panel to the card, and then machine stitch around the perimeter.)
it never fails to amaze me to realize just how many shades of white there actually are! (move over grey... there are WAY MORE than 50, lol!!!) this was borne home to me when we decided to repaint the master bedroom in the new house, and cruised into home depot's paint chip area... holy *WOW*!!!  even being fairly certain of what i needed to match the existing ceiling color, i still walked out of there with like 25 swatches! on the other hand, when it comes to card-making, and particularly monochrome card-making, i'd actually prefer NOT to have all my white tones match, since to me it's the variations that make it interesting! you can see i've got some bright white, some off-white, a couple of vaguely greyish whites, some pearl white, some sparkly white, etc. added to the mix, several of my papers have a sort of glossy "resist" pattern on them, because they are papers which can be misted to match one's projects; but more than half the time i use them unaltered, just for the cool variation they give when left white-on-white!

today being friday, i am linking up with patrice's 52-card-pickup, and then headed over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ to see what noelle and stephanie have whipped up for us. won't you join me, darlings?! ♥

7 comments:

  1. That "white" tree is fabulous...and I hear you on the million shades of white! I gotta try to find the match in my house to re-paint trim...someday. I'm still working on getting color on these walls :)

    Thanks for leaving several comments on my blog the other day; I know how busy (fun kinda busy, isn't it?) fixing up your new home. I am so excited for you both I can hardly stand it!

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  2. Lauren, this card is simply luscious!!!

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  3. Lauren, this card is breathtaking and so very elegant! Love the various shades of white, but your tree is what really catches my eye with its lovely stitching.

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  4. gorgeous card! so excited for you and your painting plans! we had NO painting to do in our new place...thank goodness...our other place is all touched up and on the market now...three showings booked so far and it has only been up since noon...fingers crossed it goes quick!

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  5. Lovely card...there are so many shades of white that even if you stay with just white...there is still a whole range of shades!!!!!

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  6. I love mixing whites too :) Thanks so much for being such an inspiration and for using my prompt at JB these last weeks. Hugs and hope you had a lovely Easter! :)

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  7. Ohhhhh yum, yum, yum!!! I am envious of your Aunt Judie.... Lol. :)

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