.labour, appreciated.

a quarter of a year has come and gone, and i recently decided to abandon my hiatus upon sporadically receiving an idea one evening. regrettably, squeezing time for scrapping (of late) has not ranked very highly on my checklist of priorities, but nevertheless, it remains a priority. the creative process, from planning to implementation and even improvisation, has long proven intrinsically rewarding for me, and i am blessed to have never lost that feeling even after protracted periods of inaction.

this was intended to be a labour day project, so i took on the task of creating mini cards in appreciation of the tireless energies my friends expend in their various vocations. the cards were from melissa frances, and originally plain and slightly dome-shaped at the top. i began by cropping the cards into regular rectangles, then rounding the corners off with my cutter bee. next, i applied a variety of distress inks on each card, and blended the shades together. i won't delve into the specifics of which inks i selected for each individual card, but collectively, the ink colours used were: tattered rose, antique linen, vintage photo, scattered straw and spiced marmalade :)

after the cards were inked, i proceeded to imprint images on them with my hero arts stamps. hero arts stamps are a personal favourite, simply because they arrive in a most impressive array of versatile yet unique designs. there's something about them i can't quite pinpoint. all i know is i am quite, quite smitten by their large, chunky wooden stamps. those, i can hardly get enough of.

after stamping came the the process of embellishing. i decided on minimizing these, lest the cards turn out gaudy. finally, i penned fun little to-do's lists, beginning each card with the proverbial "work hard" (for relevance's sake; after all, these were labour day cards), and subsequently varying the lists until the end, where i decided that "live life..." would aptly summarize all the actions encompassed in each list. do click on the images for a clearer viewing of the contents, if you wish :)
 

currently, there are plans to work on a mother's day project sometime tomorrow, and as such, i expect i'll return to this space really really soon! :)