WEDDING TRUCK

I'd like to announce that when I returned home from work yesterday, I was excited to discover that I had surpassed the 75 Followers I was looking for to award the I Need A Home card to in celebration of reaching my goal. In fact, I am now at 77 Followers! Woo hoo!

I have notified the winner of this card via email. Congratulations, Diana!

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I was so thrilled when, a few weeks ago, a man I work with commissioned a wedding card from me. When I asked him for a few particulars in designing this card, he jokingly said that they were farmers 

-- maybe a tractor? Could I make it a funny card? I mentioned to him the retired Loads of Love stamp set which features, maybe not a tractor, but a pickup truck?? That I could fill with a mound of hearts?? He wholeheartedly approved this idea. 

At my first chance, I sat down, all ready to create. I didn't want to just stamp the truck and hearts. I wanted to make this a very special card, so set out to do what I like to do so much. Paper piecing!

Not at all sure what color combination I should run with, I decided that, since I was using a red tone for the heart, I would combine the red with turquoise, a color combo that is very popular right now. 

I stamped the truck on a light turquoise Designer Series Paper and cut it out. I stamped the tires and the bumpers on a brown DSP and cut them out. Hmmm. How can I make the hubcaps look like chrome? Or at least, metal? I searched through my available papers, trying to find something that would work well. Aha! I found a small photographed sheet of silver Christmas ornaments. They showed enough reflections, and well, silver, that I thought they would work well for my simplified hubcaps. Enough said. That's what I used. And was happy with the results. Although it doesn't show up all that well in my photo of the card. :>(

I then stamped the load of hearts on another DSP. Since I wanted to mount all this atop a red 

with pink polka dot heart, I needed the hearts to have enough of a contrast that they would show up well against the heart. The DSP I chose was a pink with red zigzag lines. Perfect. 

After loading the hearts in the back of the truck, they looked cute, but . . . not enough. Just a pile of hearts?? I wanted a little more frivolity. So, I stamped the pile of hearts once more on the same DSP, and cut out just the hearts among the pile that were whole. Strewing them from the whole pile made it just frivolous enough.

OK. But then I realized that a ghost-driven truck wasn't all that great. So I decided to add the people from the accompanying stamp set. I stamped them on a soft DSP. However, when I cut the little couple out and placed them inside the truck, they looked like they were nude. Gulp. Couldn't have that. So I drew some little nondescript clothes on them. There! They were all set!

Wanting to bring more of the soft turquoise into the composition, I took a piece of the same DSP from which I cut the truck, ran it through my Big Shot inside the Square Lattice Folder and adhered that to a Whisper White card base. There! That added some needed dimension besides.

Adding a Congratulations from the Itty Bitty Banners set, cut out with the Bitty Banners Framelits, made the card into a wedding card rather than a cute Valentine. I stamped a beautiful wedding sentiment inside the card, and was pleased with my creation! Now, hopefully Eric would be also.

When I presented it to him, he smiled and told me it was perfect.

Smiles.