I Love Being Spoiled

Here's some Taffeta ribbon inspiration for you. I've made this lovely purple number for the gorgeous challenge over at Jay Gee's Nook - always a favorite of mine.

DEEtails:

People often ask me how I manage to pull an inspiration card together, so I'll try to walk you through it a bit today. If you want more details, check out a post I wrote about inspiration pics a while back. If you find this helpful or totally boring (or somewhere in between), please let me know, so I know if I should do posts like this again in the future.

Whenever I start with an inspiration card, I have to be INSPIRED by the inspiration image. I know that seems obvious, but I want to emphasize that I don't participate in every inspiration challenge and it's not because I don't have time... I only play along with the ones that really inspire me.

How do I get inspired? Well, I try to draw several elements from a picture that speak to me - basically, the elements have to be something I like (or sometimes even LOVE) as well as something that I think I can recreate or have embellishments that sort of fit.

In this inspiration challenge, I was drawn to three images towards the bottom of the card... 1) Those pretty petals on the pillow in the bottom left reminded me a bit of my crepe paper Ruffle Flowers. 2) Also notice those doilies (second from the bottom in the center) which I can't resist - love! and 3) The intricate pattern on the bottom right told me to add a little bit of a scalloped detail to my card.

At this point, I don't have any idea of what my card will look like, only that I'm actually interested in making a card inspired by this picture... Of course, I know that I have to stick with the colors of the inspiration card, so I start by pulling out some cardstock - Elegant Eggplant, Perfect Plum, Wisteria Wonder, some Whisper White, a bit of Basic Gray. Notice that I don't use ALL these colors... I just pull them out to know what I can work with. I decide that Wisteria Wonder doesn't quite work here, so I put it aside. Having the colors out helps me to think through how I want to combine the elements and colors for my card.

Now I start thinking about my inspiration elements and what I can actually do with them. I recently created a gray crepe paper Ruffled Flower, and I think that would work perfectly, so I pull it out. Dark purple doilies aren't something I have on hand, but I have some white doilies and I find some large lavendar doilies, which might work. I can also stamp some with SU!'s Delicate Doilies set, so I pull those out. And lastly, a pretty scalloped detail is something I can easily make with the Scallop Edge Border punch. I play with my elements a bit, tossing out the idea of using actual doilies since they don't quite work with my Ruffled Flower. Remember, that this is a process, and pulling things out and putting them back are just part of the process.

I decide on Elegant Eggplant doilies stamped on Perfect Plum card stock, so I start stamping a background. I want to tie in those dark doilies with my Scalloped edge, so I punch the border on some Elegant Eggplant card stock. I need something to blend those edges together, so I pull out some Perfect Plum Taffeta which looks absolutely gorgeous with my Ruffled Flower. I want a sentiment that allows for a good amount of gray to show at the bottom (to tie in with my gray flower) as well as balance my big bloom, so I choose the cute Thank You sentiment from SU!'s Afterthoughts and ink it with some Basic Gray. I add a Perfect Plum button, tied up with some gray and white Baker's Twine to finish things off... and Voila! There you have an inspiration card! :)

So tell me... what do you think? Helpful? Total bore snore? Should I go through the inspiration process more often? Are you inspired to start making your own inspiration cards? Do you wish I'd stop typing already? *Giggle*

See you tomorrow... Same place, same time! :)