FRENCH FOLIAGE CASE

If you  have read my little About Me on my blog, you will discover "I need to use my creativity every day in order to stay happy and sane." Well, I'm not completely sure about the "sane" part, but creating certainly does boost my happiness quotient. And days when I miss out on doing something creative are days like . . . well, without sunshine to someone who suffers from SAD. Very sad indeed.

Sometimes, if I've had a rough low self-esteem day, and I don't have any pressing projects, I treat myself to a bit of a challenge to cheer myself up. I randomly reach into the stack of all the pages I have saved for years, and do whatever is on the selected page. It could be a new or forgotten technique, a photo of a good card layout, a 3-D project. Whatever it turns out to be is my assignment.

Recently I had one of those days, and this is what I randomly chose for my personal creativity challenge:

I believe I had saved this page from an old issue of PaperCrafts magazine. Of course, being created with the French Foliage stamp set -- one of my all-time favorites -- was a big draw in selecting it to save. The artist of this original card was Angela Fehr. If you're reading this, Angela, thanks for the challenge. Lovely card!

My version of this card is here:

I distressed my card more than the original, both by adding sponging -- on the edges and sporadically across the design -- and working those edges. I brought a little more of the Cherry Cobbler into play by mounting it onto that color, as well as framing my sentiment with it.. 

To create the mat for the sentiment, I used the tabbed label from the Apothecary Accents Framelits set. To change the label up a bit, I sliced off the tab on the left side. I then used the remaining tab as a resting place for my button with baker's twine. Oh, the sentiment is from Blooming With Kindness. 

Ah, after that, I feel so much better.

CASEing

Smiles.