Today was one of those days where what looked simple and quick, just wasn’t.

The tutorial was presented by the queen of rainbows and blending Laura Bassen.  She did not disappoint, as her cards were stunning.  As Shakespeare would say, “the fault lies within yourself”, meaning me.  First of all, using the word MOM posed a challenge as the alphabet die only has one “M”.  I had the devil of a time lining the letters up when they had to go through the cutter in separate passes.  Then just when I wanted a smooth white card front, it seemed that every scratch on my plate embossed itself on my card front.  When I finally got one card to the stage where I was going to glue the card front to the base, I inadvertently pressed the card front to my media mat.  It did not want to come off without a struggle, which resulted in some bends and folds in the card front.  This card had to be set aside until my attitude improved.  In the meantime, I completed the other two cards.  I liked how they turned out.  The alphabet die set I used comes with both the shadow and the letters with the holes which makes it very versatile. As usual, the glimmery satin rose gold cardstock looks very elegant in real life, but loses something in the photography.  When I look at the card here in the picture, it seems it needs more, but when I look at the card itself sitting on my desk, it is perfect with no additional embellishment.

When I turned my attention back to that pesky first card, I decided to cover the bend and folds as best I could as I didn’t want to start over.  The bends and folds were big enough that no little cluster of gems or enamel dots were going to fix it.  What to do?  My Gemini Foil Press was sitting on my desk from another project so I decided to use that to make some simple but elegant flowers.  I think the resulting card remain CAS with a touch of elegance from the foiling.

Whew, that was hard work today.