Fifteen-minute card ... more or less

This month I haven't been posting on my blog nearly as much as I expected to or should have been. It seems that getting back into the swing of things after the holidays has been tricky. And then last week I started getting sick with whatever crud is going around. I had to work Friday (and yesterday) because we already had other staff out sick, but by Friday night I was down for the count with a nasty cough and crazy sore throat. I spent all Saturday and Sunday in bed. On Monday I migrated to the couch in the living room for a change of scenery and some different TV viewing options. (Side note: I am a tad bitter that I had to spend my glorious three-day weekend sick. Boo!)

All in all I know I was pretty lucky to "bounce back" so quickly, although I'm still not 100%; the runny/stuffy nose and cough are lingering. I didn't feel the greatest coming home from work today, and I really wanted to curl up with my book and a blanket. But I had this nagging feeling that I should make something. It seemed too overwhelming, though, to decide what kind of card to make and then what stamps to use and what colors ... well, you see where it was going. To take some of the pressure off, I decided I would make a fifteen-minute card. With that idea in my head, it didn't seem like such a daunting task, and I gave myself "permission" to just make something without worrying about whether it was "good enough."

In the end, the card I made probably took twenty to twenty-five minutes. But even though my timing was a bit off, I accomplished what I wanted to: I made a card without fretting about decisions. I just picked out one of the first stamps I saw, thought of an embellishment that would work with it and kept going from there. As a bonus, I used some supplies that I haven't touched in a long time. Here is the finished product:

Supplies (all Stampin' Up!^®):
Stamps: [name unknown; retired incentive stamp]
Card stock: Crumb Cake, Blushing Bride, Whisper White
Ink: Jet Black StazOn, Crumb Cake, Blushing Bride
Accessories: Square doily, Framed Tulips embossing folder, Elegant Bouquet embossing folder, 1-3/4" circle punch, 1-1/4" and 2-3/8" scallop circle punches, Boho Blossoms punch, 1/16" hole punch, Blender Pen, pearls, Dimensionals, Glue Dots

The Crumb Cake base is just a 4-1/4" x 5-1/2" piece of card stock (embossed with the Framed Tulips embossing folder), not a traditional folded card base. Instead, the card is inside the doily "envelope" (although you could write on the back of the Crumb Cake base if you needed more space). To make the envelope, fold the doily in half horizontally and vertically to find the center of the square. Open it back up and fold three of the corners into the center point. I placed a Glue Dot on the bottom corner and then adhered the right and left corners to the Glue Dot. I added the Blushing Bride scalloped circle to cover the "seam" and to help the corners stay together.

The card inside the envelope is 3-1/4" square and embossed with the Elegant Bouquet embossing folder. I stamped the image with Jet Black StazOn ink on Whisper White card stock and used a Blender Pen to color it. I punched out the finished image and adhered it to a scallop circle, and then I used a 1/16" hole punch to make a hole in each of the scallops. I used Dimensionals to attach the focal point to the card, and -- ta da! -- a more-or-less fifteen-minute card.

Tomorrow I'll be receiving a bunch of new goodies from the Stampin' Up! spring catalog and Sale-A-Bration promotion (yippee!), so I hope to have several fun creations to share with you soon. Thanks for stopping by!