"What do you do with a white gel pen, what do you do with a white gel pen? What do you do with a white gel pen, earlie in the mornin'"

(to the tune of What do you do with a drunken sailor...) Yes, I know, I'm weird. I had that ditty running through my head this morning, so there you go. Last night I attempted to make two cards after sitting and staring at my hands for several hours, willing them to be creative. I went to bed pretty discouraged because neither card turned out how I had envisioned. The first one wasn't too bad, but the second, which is today's featured card, combined Karen Giron's (very tough) Sweet Sunday sketch and the (also challenging) Curtain Call Color Challenge for this week. I wanted to use the (now-retired) Sip by Sip stamp set and the layout came together pretty well, but it just looked so, well, blah. Plus my stamping was all crooked on the center piece, despite my careful Stamp-a-ma-jig efforts. I ended up using Kiwi Kiss instead of Old Olive because I thought that the inspiration picture was closer to Kiwi than Olive. I also thought that the lighter blue was closer to Tempting Turquoise, but stuck with Ballet Blue because I didn't want to push my luck. :)

So this morning, I took off the crooked stamped piece, restamped it (ah, much better!) and then thought about adding some faux stitching to the panels beneath. I didn't quite trust myself to free hand the zig-zags, so I took my paper piercer and mat pack and gave myself a template to work with. Boy did that brighten up the card! I'm always amazed how some little thing can really make a card come together. So I'm pretty happy with it now.

Supplies:
Kraft, Ballet Blue, Whisper White, Night of Navy cs, kiwi kiss dsp (retired)
Sip by Sip stamp set
Ballet blue, night of navy, kiwi kiss, close to cocoa inks
Kraft taffeta ribbon, white gel pen, paper piercer, mat pack