Starry Lady

I made this card for the challenge at the Stampotique Design Challenge blog, where the challenge was to use one punch and one diecut in your design. It's the challenge where you can use stamps other than just Stampotique images.

I started off with Ms Starry (Stampotique), embossed in gold on watercolour paper, and added in a bunch of stars (Papertrey Ink), also gold embossed. Then I punched out some stars using a Fiskars hand punch and coloured the image using Tombow markers and a paintbrush. I embellished with some stickles (see second image for more sparkle than the scanner could pick up) and added smaller stars with stickles, a gold leaf pen, and a glitter pen. I had left a gap for the sentiment (see third picture), but it was too big, so I put it on the inside. This left a large gap, and DH suggested that the card needed the Milky Way. He was absolutely right and I forgive him for all his comments about crooked stamping, excessive (i.e., any) ribbon, and corny content. The Milky Way was a stroke of genius, and I boldly and bravely set to with my gold and glitter pens to create a starry path for my lady here.

The die cut portion of the card is at the bottom, and it's more of the card base (dark purple), die cut with a Tim Holtz edger and sponged with Champagne shimmer paint. The panel behind it is amethyst stamped with the Gemstone cube (Stampendous) in amethyst and gold ink. The card base itself is stamped in Versamark dazzle using the Star map scrapblock by Cornish Heritage Farms. I also gave the card base a light spritz with gold Smooch spray. The focal image is mounted on foam tape over a gold mat, so that the punched stars have some dimension over the gold behind.

I've had this sentiment for a long time - I really like it. So when I saw this image of Ms Starry on the Stampotique website, I thought it would be the perfect complement to this sentiment. The words are embossed in eggplant on ice blue linen paper, matted on more dark purple and edged with gold leaf pen. The tiny stars are accented with gold stickles.

Now that I'm done, I have only one problem - choosing who to send it to since there are so many wonderful people in my life that make me smile like that. Not a bad kind of problem to have!

Thanks for looking.