Challenges and Experiments

I was so excited to see the Tic Tac Toe Challenge return. I love the format of this challenge. They give you a board with nine squares filled with characteristics your creation must contain but you can do any row, column or diagonal.

The Inspiration

This weeks board:

I chose the column down the middle: Die cut, Spring, and Blue. I’ve been organizing my craft room (another challenge of a whole different kind!) and I knew I had some blue flowers I wanted to use. I also had a bicycle stamp from a long-ago Paper Pumpkin. It really is amazing what we have in our craft rooms.

The Experiment

Anyhow, I got this idea from a card made by Amy Koenders. She had a single layer with the bike stamped on top of a stamped tree. And I thought, what if I used a die-cut tree. And then what if I made it an easel card. But how would I get to the tree to take the image so that it was intact if the tree was on top? What if I embedded the tree but it popped up on its own when the card was folded. Yeah! This is gonna be cool.

And it was—after three tries.

The Card

Here is the card lying flat more or less. The base is Tempting Turquoise, a retired color that matched my stash flowers perfectly. The tree is cut from Kraft paper which has a nice woody quality. The Whisper White base was scored first then die cut. I did this to make sure the hole for the branches was above the score line and the trunk of the tree was below.

Next, I fit the Kraft tree into the Whisper White base and stamped my bicycle in Tuxedo Black Memento ink. After the ink was dry, I cut the white base on the score and then placed the two halves on the blue card base. I focused on getting the two halves as close as possible but also aligned on the edges to give the illusion of one folding piece. I cut it because leaving it as one piece didn’t work well with folding it back and forth.

The sentiment is from an old Paper Pumpkin as well, Giftable Greetings. I stamped it in Crumb Cake and added a bit of linen twine at the end. Finally, I glued the blue flowers to the tree and added a pearl to each one.

But we aren’t done. The easel needs something to hold it in place. I used a sentiment that says “Today and Always” from the Lasting Lily stamp set (old Saleabration I think). It’s popped up on Dimensionals and set far up on the interior so that the tree stands upright when the card is folded.

I’m totally biased, but I think this is a really cool card. It’s advanced and fussy, but I fell in love with the results. Thanks to the Tic Tac Toe coordinators for kicking off this project with their fun challenge.

What have you got in your craft stash that’s inspiring your creativity this weekend?

Quick update: This card was selected as a Team Pick! I’m so honored.