A La Mexico

When my DH saw this card he said the colors reminded him of Mexico, and I guess he's right. It's the kind of color combination that would fit in well in Mexico or the Caribbean. It was inspired by, what else?, a skirt from the Coldwater Creek catalog. I've stopped even trying to get color combination from other places -- Coldwater Creek is all I need.


In designing this card I deliberately wanted to get away from the horizontal orientation with a strip across the length of the layout type card. I noticed today that this basically described the last three cards I uploaded here and I thought that was quite enough. That layout is one I turn to again and again -- it's my stamping equivalent of comfort food. But every once in a while I need to spice things up, and I don't think I could come up with a spicier card than this.


I started with a real red base stamped in real red with the Sanded background (I know it's hard to see in the photo). I then chose my three other colors -- elegant eggplant, tempting turquoise and only orange. I stamped the only orange panel with the sanded background inked up with real red classic ink too, just to tone down what would otherwise be a very bright front panel.


I used the wanted set for my main images, stamped in elegant eggplant on real red, tempting turquoise and only orange. I used the scalloped circle punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, 1/2" circle punch and star punch. For the sentiment I initially just stamped the "congratulations" from the Hugs and Wishes set in elegant eggplant on only orange car stock, but Bill suggested that I "frou frou" it up a little, so I added the two stars on either side, trimmed them out by hand and added punched tempting turquoise stars in the back.


Not too long ago I asked my friend "Jo" how she would describe my card style and, after thinking about it for a moment, she said "unusual color combos". I guess I have to agree with her and, by that definition, this is a quintessential "Diane" card. Hope you like it!