Whew!  Time for some antidote to pink!  Not that there’s anything wrong with pink…but I’m swimmin’ in the stuff this week.  Some friends are expecting a baby girl the beginning of next month and we’re getting having a small get together this weekend to celebrate.  I’ve got a couple of Pink Projects in various stages of completion and it’s time to put the pedal to the metal and get them done!

In the meantime, I made another cover for one of my many Circa notebooks. I have a LOT of these notebooks that I use for a variety of purposes.  If  I don’t personalize the covers, then I tend to get a little cranky when I’m looking for a particular one and have to flip through 2 or 3 others in the process.  (By the way, if you read the post where I lamented my AWOL Aquapainter, it was hidden in plain sight.)  I like to make fresh covers for the pleasure of it and to keep myself on my toes.

This notebook has red Rollabind discs, so I knew red would be in my color scheme.  I chose Riding Hood Red (IC’09) to celebrate the new Color Renovation, and Wild Wasabi (IC’08) and Crushed Curry (IC’10) just fell into place behind it.  A three-generational-In-Color trifecta!

• Inspired by Nature and Flight of the Butterfly stamp sets
• Whisper White, Riding Hood Red, Wild Wasabi, Crushed Curry and Basic Gray card stock
• Wild Wasabi, Crushed Curry and Riding Hood Red Classic ink pads
• Wild Wasabi striped ribbon (retired), chipboard letters (retired) and Sponge Daubers

Inspired by Nature was one of the sets demonstrators received at the 2008 Stampin’ Up! convention.  I learned a great technique at convention when we did our Make ‘n Takes:  we used Sponge Daubers to selectively apply ink to the stamp.  The sponges avoid streaks that sometimes appear when you use a marker on bold images, and they give the image a slight softness.  You can also spritz the entire stamp very lightly for a watercolor effect.   I added the Basic Gray into the mat layers because the Riding Hood combined with the Wild Wasabi and Crushed Curry created  a confused Christmas/Rasta kind of look…not quite the effect I was going for.  Serendipitously, I realized  I really like Basic Gray paired with Crushed Curry – I’ll be putting those two together very soon.