Guest Desiging for the Lawnscaping Challenge!!

I am thrilled to be guest designing for the Lawnscaping Challenge. When Laurel contacted me with the invitation, I was flabbergasted. The Lawnscaping guest designers are big names in the industry. What do they want with little 'ole me? Regardless, I wasn't about to pass up this opportunity.

The challenge is to make a one-layer project, which is difficult for someone who loves to add a little bling to almost every project! LOL! I do, however, like one-layer cards. Not only are they very clean and simple, but they easy to mail. No special envelopes or extra postage, and no worrying that your card will be destroyed before the recipient sees it!!

Before I go into detail about how I made this card, I want to share a story about the inspiration behind it. You see, I lost my grandmother on Thursday. She was 95. She and my grandfather were married for 73 years and knew eachother since they were five. Yes, my grandma and grandpa knew eachother for 90 years! Pretty amazing.

My grandpa holding grandma's hand

I thought about a sympathy card, but I decided to make something that would celebrate her life instead. She and grandpa lived on a farm. Grandma always had these beautiful flowers adorning the driveway. She loved her flowers. She loved her family, too. She had five children, 17 grandchildren, 32 great grandchildren and 3 great-great grandchildren. What a legacy she has left! I am so honored to be her granddaughter.

I have two go-to techniques I use when making one-layer cards. The first is masking. To give my card a little dimension without adding layers, I first stamped the word "love" using Quinn's ABCs on the card base. I stamped it again on another piece of paper, cut them out and adhered them on top of the word "love" on the card base using repositionable adhesive. Then I stamped the remaining images, peeled off the cut out letters and very carefully remove the adhesive from the card base using an adhesive remover tool. Now the word "love" appears at the front and the flowers and mushroom look like they're growing behind the words.

The second technique I use is coloring. The down-side of a one-layer card is there are fewer options for adding color to your  project. Ribbons, additional colored cardstock, bling and washi tape are very popular ways to add color, but they also add layers. To maintain only one layer, color must be applied directly to the card.

I personally chose to color the images with Prismacolor  pencils and Gamsol oil (odorless mineral spirits), but you could also use markers, watercolors, distress inks or chalk. I also distressed the sky using ink and a blending tool.

I hope you like my card. I'll be back in a couple weeks with another Lawnscaping challenge project!