Using Other Cards as Inspiration

How many times have you sat down to make a card and.......nothing. You have got no mo-jo? No ideas come to mind and you're in a rut and can't get out of it? One thing I do is to go to other handmade cards I've saved from friends and family, magazines, online galleries and sites to get ideas from.

If you've been in my store and asked where I came up with an idea, sometimes I will say that I got them from online, and I really did. Okay, I can come up with some nice things on my own too, but I get in a rut here and there also and need some ideas! This post is about that...how I take someone else's sketch idea....or color idea....or wording....whatever, and use it as inspiration for my own cards! For this purpose I have taken ideas from Kristina Werner and used them to make my own cards...using HER ideas!! And she has some very nice ones, too!! Some are simple, some are more complicated. The thing is here, to see how she made her card and how I took her idea and used it. You can do the same thing. Look at hers, look at mine and come up with your own. You can do it, really, it's easy!

For all of the cards I will be posting in this series, I used scraps of paper I had. Only 2 sheets of paper were actually cut to be used as cardbases, because I ran out of big pieces.

Here is the first card I'll post today:

This is hers: This is mine:

I used her card as a sketch idea. I used a kraft cardstock base, put the green square on it which has the top left corner rounded, then underneath the piece of snowflake strip, ( I scalloped the edge of it before adhering). The word NOEL is made using chipboard letters. The snowflake is a punch, a brad is in the center and I pop dotted this piece. "Joyeaux" is handwritten on a small piece of coordinating green aper and pop dotted to the green square. On the left side of the card , I rounded the corners to match the rounded edges on the green square and the scallops underneath. Faux stitching (done with a Uniball pen) finishes the edges off!

See how I used her ideas? I used her layout, the word NOEL and her faux stitching. Fun, simple and you can use this as your inspiration!

Watch for my next post and next card inspiration.....

Happy Card Making!!