Rescued Best Wishes

Carla's Ways to Use Challenge on SCS today was for us to "rescue" cards we had in our stash that we weren't quite happy with and wanted to improve. This challenge is right up my alley, because as a hoarder I rarely throw stuff away, even the things I'm really not very happy with. I don't do this often enough, but on occasion I do dip into this "runt" pile and do my best to "rescue" one or two. It was an absolute pleasure to do so today for this challenge.

There were many rescue contenders in my runt pile, but my time was limited so I tackled on of the easiest ones. A little more than nine years ago (Wow - I can't believe so much time has passed) I was making single layer cards for an SU convention swap that used the masking and faux tearing techniques. You can find the card and the tutorial in this post.

The card was a bit complicated, so it's not surprising that not every single one of my efforts was successful. However, none of them were so bad that they deserved to get tossed, so I kept them all in my runt pile, including the one pictured here which, in all fairness, was nearly perfect. The frame image was not perfectly centered in the white space, but I could have lived with that flaw. What made me toss this card into the runt pile was the slight smidge of elegant eggplant to the left of the stamped frame. It's a small flaw, but I thought my swap recipients deserved better. And with today's additions, this scrap card turned into quite a usable one.

First I stamped the three cake image from the Fun and Fast Notes set in elegant eggplant ink on a square of glossy white card stock. I then colored portions of the image with markers from the wisteria wonder, old olive, and smoky slate blendabilities assortments. I attached the image to a larger square of elegant eggplant card stock with dimensionals. I die cut a strip of certainly celery card stock with the large scallop edgelit and then embossed it with the lace embossing folder from the Elegant Designs textured impressions set. I arranged the elegant eggplant and certainly celery elements on top of my "runt" card base and attached them with snail so that the lace overlapped the edge of the elegant eggplant square and also covered up the elegant eggplant smudge to the left of the sentiment. As a final touch I added three of the smallest pearls from the basic pearl jewels assortment to the center flowers on each cake and attached the next largest size of pearls in the semicircles of the embossed lace.

I think this was a rather successful rescue. I may like it even better than the last "rescue" I performed on a similar card base this spring. That particular "runt" was in worse shape and required more work to cover up its sins, but the final result was also pretty and elegant. .

Huge thanks to Carla for the great challenge. I have a feeling I will be dipping into my "runt" card pile again soon to perform some more rescues.

Recipe:

Paper: Glossy White, certainly celery, elegant eggplant
Ink: Elegant Eggplant, wisteria wonder, old olive, and smoky slate blendabilities assortments, and also certainly celery and lovely lilac on original card
Stamps: Fun and Fast Notes and also Floral, Sincere Salutations, and Frames with a Flourish on original card
Accessories: large scallop edgelit, Elegant Designs textured impressions embossing folders, Basic Pearl Jewels and also post-it notes, brayer, and Stamp-a-ma-jig on original card