No Layer Monday

Good afternoon all! After a nice relaxing (ha!) weekend it's great to be able to do some laundry, pick-up the house, try to keep the children from killing each other and, of course, stamp!

I've seen so many cards similiar to this design - a simple, no layer card with minimal embellishments - and think they are so pretty. But this was hard for me, I am so used to layering up cardstock, using more stamps, watercoloring, punching and adding things. I recently purchased my first Spectrum pad (you know those great SU pads that have 5 color strips so they stamp in differnt colors) in Cotton Candy and have been wanting to use it. So, for this card, I cut an oval out of a scrap piece of paper and used it as a mask on my Whisper White cardstock. I brayered the Cotton Candy spectrum ink over my mask and, viola - a beautiful background image! The next hard part for me was choosing an image to stamp. I think the beautiful simplicty of the other cards I've seen is that they didn't have a lot of stamping or a lot (or even any) additional colors. I used Springtime Stems, a 2007 hostess set and Warm Words, with only StazOn Black and Rose Red inks. Then just because I had to add something, I added the wide pink organdy ribbon at the bottom, cutting a slit in the card fold to put the ribbon through before tying.

I think you could so a lot with this simple idea. If you have large plain stamps in any shape -rectangle, circle, oval, etc. - you could create a similar look by simply inking it with 2 coordinating inks (always stamp on the lighter color first so you don't contaminate your light colors). These would be great cards to make in a gift set for friends and family. Who wouldn't love a hand-stamped "All Occasion" card set??!!

So what do you think - send me comments (click on the link directly under this post), send me your creations. I hope we can all share our ideas and inspire each other! Have a great day!