The Card Concept #16: Wild Card Team Challenge

Hey all! Fun news today... I'm starting up on a new challenge team with The Card Concept! It's the Wild Card Design Team and I am very excited to be apart of it. And let me tell you why, this is a place where we get to try ALL the styles of card making as we participate in the challenges every other week. That's a whole lotta fun in my book! 

I'm excited to start with my very first challenge today. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Hope you enjoy the process!  You can see the inspiration photo below and our challenge was to create a wedding card, but in addition to this, the style I was assigned to create is in the Freestyle Collage category. 

Well, let me just tell you right now, that I don't do much freestyle collage-ing on my cards, mostly because it's intimidating to me, so this was definitely a challenge! So right out of the gate I had three criteria. Inspiration photo, wedding card and free-wheelin' it...

 Let me show you what I ended up doing:

As I looked at the inspiration photo I was first struck by the lovely colours. Notice the light blue but then also a green/aqua colour in the hydrangeas? Colors are never flat and simple. Especially in flowers, which is why I love them! I also noticed the silver votive candle holder and I really wanted to create the texture that the little hydrangea petals give off. Small/circular/cluster-y. You know what I mean?? 

So I started with some light-light-light sponging with this fun stencil. (Did I say light?) I just did a section of my card base. I tested out all the blue Distress Inks I own and chose Salty Ocean but I knew it was much to bright for what I wanted. So I sponged off most of my colour before applying a light (ha!) layer onto my card base.

One of the things about freestyle collage (IMHO) is all the little elements that while seemingly random, come together to make a nice grouping of 'shtuff'. Ya? And to that point you have to have lots of 'shtuff' to choose from (which I do not. Had to downsize my embellishments to get them into my apartment office!). So I liked the silver votive candle and decided I wanted something silver in my grouping. But I don't have many embellishments lying around my space so I figured anything I wanted, I would have to make myself. So I die cut a doily from white card stock and embossed it with silver a few times to make it nice and thick.

I stamped and coloured the flowers with both light blue and aqua Copics trying to get a two toned look. I kind of like how mottled it turned out in spots. As you may know, Copics are meant for blending similar colours in varying shades so when you do different colours, you get interesting results.

So once I had my card base sponged and my elements created I just added in a feather (random shtuff) and a little heart button down at the bottom because I felt like it could use some weight distribution and also, it is a wedding card after all ; ) I die cut my sentiment and added some textured vellum behind it to help it pop a bit.  

And there you have it! My first Wild Card 'Freestyle Collage' card! Honestly, I feel like this came together pretty well considering I don't have much experience in it. I did very little 'head-on-wall' pounding, which to me is a success! This is a technique I have admired from afar and it was fun to try myself. I think this is a forgiving style if you are new to it, so you should give it a go! And do let me know how you like creating it yourself. Maybe you will find freestyle collage is your new go-to style! That would be fun right? 

Ok. So be sure to stop by The Card Concept blog for a chance at the challenge yourself. You have until Monday Aug 18 at noon to participate. Hope you can join us! I can't wait to see what you create!

Thanks so much for stopping by.

xoxo

k