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I'm so curious about this month's Around the World Blog Hop and I think you will be too. The theme is Layer Up and it's all about using (lots of) layers PLUS we get to decide what that really means.
I confess that I thought twice about this one. Lately I lean towards CAS and border cards, not necessarily many layers. Layers of embossing? Layers of ink?...
Well, I've been thinking about trying to layer these Picture This pieces since I first cut a bunch of them while trying a friend's dies - last summer. Of course I never put the die in exactly the same place so when I stacked them up little moon shapes peek through when you layer them. Anyway, the thought of layering them intrigued me. I finally used them yesterday for a color challenge since I had die cuts for two of the colors (Mango Melody and Flirty Flamingo) and a card base, Pale Papaya, in the third. A key for this particular look was that the colors a rather close to each other on the color wheel.
- The Flirty Flamingo and Mango Melody layers are shifted just slightly from each other leaving only crescent shapes of Mango Melody showing through the Flirty Flamingo.
- Since the circles were originally cut from quarter sheets I had room to trim them down in order to create borders.
- While I could have embossed my greeting directly onto my card I chose to use a separate piece and add it as an extra(!!!) layer. This gave me a little more wiggle room to get it centered in the framing circle. The inside greeting, "you matter to me" is also from the Happy & Heartfelt stamp set from the January - June 2022 Mini Catalog.
- Brushed Brass Butterflies finish this off beautifully, especially since it echoes the gold in the greeting.
There are so many possibilities that I decided to put together a few more, using up the rest of the die cuts I had packed. Depending on the colors and the way you layer the dies there are many possibilities.
Monochromatic: I just love using white on white!
- These are layered differently, basically turning the top circle layer 180 degrees so that they create a different pattern than the crescents in the previous card.
- A little texture from my favorite folder, Tasteful Textile 3D, adds a little more interest.
- I decided not to add much more to this, just a die cut "thanks" from the Amazing Thanks dies and a few tiny gold flowers that didn't make it onto the previous card.
Finally, using higher contrast colors becomes graphic art by itself:
- This one uses 4 untrimmed quarter sheet die cuts over another Pale Papaya card base, arranged in a random fashion. Pretty thick though you could also trim these a bit to leave several borders.
- I used Very Vanilla, Pumpkin Pie and Granny Apple Green because well, those are the colors I had - and I didn't have either the dies or a large Stampin' Cut & Emboss in my traveling stash.
- I die cut the Happy & Heartfelt greeting with a Stitched Rectangle die. This did fit in my Mini Stampin' Cut & Emboss, which is the only machine I have with me right now (and it's 20% off this month)!
What colors would you use? I think I'll be trying some more of these once I'm back home...
Now it's time to see how everyone else interpreted our little layer theme. Next up is Tricia Butts. I'm sure she has something wonderful to share with us!
Here is the whole group for this month:
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