Who would have thunk it?

If a few months ago anyone would have told me that I would some day love to use sage shadow or a doodle set, and especially in combination, I would have recommended that they check their temperature. Until very recently sage shadow was one of my least favorite colors. I had convinced myself that it didn't go with anything and I was incapable of incorporating it into my cards. And then, slowly, things started to change.

First Stampin' Up! released the Enchante double sided designer paper in the winter mini catalog, and suddenly I found that pale plum, prefect plum, certainly celery and sage shadow went really well together. Then a color challenge on SCS showed me that sage shadow works well with real red and basic black. Then Trina, one of Jen's friends, pointed out that sage shadow went really well with the new soft sky and blue bayou in colors and sure enough, she was right. And now this -- Stampin' Up! pairing sage shadow with really rust (one of my favorite colors) and shades of brown in the new Boho West collection. WOW! I guess sometimes I'm really slow, but I'm sold! Sage shadow just became my new BFF (or at least until I "discover" another hidden gem color).

So needless to say when I started thinking about my challenge card I was excited about the color combo, but I didn't know which Stampin' Up! sets I wanted to use. When I came into my stamp room my eye fell on a sample stamped with the Double line Doodle set, and I started feeling very guilty.

You see, Double Line Doodles has been a silent and unused resident of the stamp room since last August, when I received it while attending the Stampin' Up! Chicago Regionals. At the time the doodle trend was just beginning, and everyone was excited to know that we could look forward to seeing this set in the new idea book and catalog. Everyone except me, that is.
You see, I've never been a doodler, and so this set just didn't appeal to me. So I tucked it and the samples we stamped at Regionals away in a drawer and forgot about it until very recently.

When I was getting ready for the launch of the new catalog I took the stamp set out and looked at it again with fresh eyes. And I found that my tastes have changed, or maybe it was the context that had changed. Looking at the set now I find it really cute. I love the paisley stamp and all the flowers and I even like the funky bird. But even though I now liked the set, I still didn't stamp with it because I was so in love with my other new sets! So when I walked into the stamp room today I knew that this was it -- this was the day I would design my first card using double line doodles!

I turned the challenge set 90 degrees so that the card was vertical instead of horizontal. I started with a 4.25x5.5" piece of sage shadow as a base, which I sponged with really rust. I layered a piece of 4x5.25" of chocolate chip card stock on top. I then used a 3.75x8.5" piece of really rust card stock, punched a at one of the short edges and folded the card so that the edge fir perfectly under the slit. I unfolded the card and stamped the paisley stamp as a background in really rust ink just on the flap. I then re-folded the card and stamped the "I Just Love You" sentiment on the really rust piece of card stock showing underneath the flap in chocolate chip ink.
I stamped the small flower on sage shadow card stock in chocolate chip ink and punched it out with a 3/4" circle punch. I adhered it over the slit and secured it with a vintage brad. I then adhered the whole really rust piece to the base.

For the main image I took a piece of sage shadow card stock and sponged the edges using chocolate chip ink. I then stamped three flowers and corresponding stems on a piece of very vanilla card stock in chocolate chip ink and colored them in using stampin' pastels and my blender pen. I sponged the edges with really rust ink and added three brads in the upper left hand corner. I adhered the image to the sage shadow mat and adhered the whole thing to the really rust flap.

If the image you see at the beginning of this post seems really flat, that's because the camera is still dead and we haven't had time to get a new one, so my only recourse is to use the scanner. Sorry about that! But I still think the card came out cute, so let's hear it for Boho West, sage shadow and Double Line Doodles! Woo Hoo!