in a sentimental mood

we're all talk this week at shopping our stash. the name of our challenge is, "getting sentimental" and the brief is to make your sentiment the focal point of your card or project. fun, right? here's what i made:

oversized letters made by tracing around ancient basic grey chipboard alphas onto cardstock and collaging with vintage paper; background paper: allison kreft/echo park; birthday die: paper trey ink (on a scrap of gelli print); watercolor panel made with not-very-diluted colorburst pigment powders in indigo and turquoise on strathmore watercolor paper and trimmed with an oldschool circle cutter!; elderly large and small star brads from my stash; black glossy cardstock: ranger; ink: colorbox; adhesives: scotch brand gluestick, elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape

i love big sentiments. which probably doesn't surprise anyone who has been here before. i have more alphabet stamps and die sets than anyone i know. and i still wind up, a fair amount of the time, using either a printout from t'internet or a set of oversized chipboard letters-- in this case an ancient set of basic grey's awesome "mini monograms" --as template for hand-cutting more letters. like this time.

ordinarily, the way i would make a set of collaged letters like this would be to 1) figure out how much space all my letters will take up; 2) randomly attach small scraps of vintage paper to that size of a piece of plain cardstock; and 3) trace the chipboard letters onto the collaged panel, then cut them out with scissors and/or xacto knife. and frankly, that's what i'll go back to doing in future, because it's easier and you get very similar results!

what i did this time, however, was 1) trace and cut the letters from plain cardstock; 2) attach scraps of vintage paper to each letter individually; and 3) trim up the excess with scissors and/or xacto knife. i thought this would give me more precise placement of collaged elements and a more interesting look. which... i guess it did a little bit... but not enough to justify how much extra cutting and trimming and fussing there was, imo. it's always good to try out new processes though, you never know when you'll stumble on to something that's way better than what you were already doing. not always though, as this little caper proved! :)

once i had my collaged letters i was ready to affix them to a colorburst-ed circle. i should probably confess right now that i actually made the circle FIRST... (which is just under 5" in diameter and trimmed from a panel on which i used up some extra indigo and turquoise pigment a while back) ...and in fact, i used the circle to decide what size, shape and color my letters should be. but i forgot to photograph that part of the process, so i thought i'd just tuck it in here at the very end, instead. you're welcome, lol. i "auditioned" quite a few background panels before deciding on this older echo park black and white text paper. finally i added the word "birthday" diecut from a scrap of gelli print and a few very verrrrrrrrrrry old silver star brads of unknown origin to balance out the top part of the circle.

there are loads more clever and stash-centric ideas to be had from my lovely design team sisters at shopping our stash. why not treat yourself to some eye candy right now? ♥