Are Rules Made to Be Broken?

Now we are almost into the month of December,. My Christmas cards are mailed. The Christmas decorations are out. Presents are bought and wrapped (I hope -I am writing this post in early November), and I have mostly moved on to mostly other things than Christmas cards.

When I was at the York Heirloom show and shopped at Pat Huntoon's Technique Junkie booth I bought some new stamps.  I am only now getting to make cards with these. This is one of those new stamps I bought.

Then I must also confess - sometimes as stampers we just hit a dry spell, when we cannot think of a new card layout or a new placement of element on the front of the card.  There are some things you can do about this when it hits.  You can give up until inspiration hits you.  That is not a good option in my opinion although it has happened tome this way in the past when I have been ill for a while.

Or you can look for new card front layouts and new ways of presenting the focal image.  There are lots of places on the internet to do this.  I subscribe to  a lot of blogs for this purpose. I follow those blogs whose author pays attention to detail and the way they create fits my own creative thinking.  Sometimes they do not show cards with stamps I like (or own for that matter) but I will like the layout. I will save those images.

You can look on Splitcoast Stampers for cards made with a specific stamp set or with a particular theme or subject matter in their search box.  I have searched both ways.  And in the last few years you can look on interest.  I rarely just "go" to Pinterest but use the email they send me to find new things.   And that was how I found this layout.  I thought it was perfect for this stamp set from Technique Junkie Stamps!

The Technique Junkie focal image stamp set is The Rules -  http://techniquejunkies.com/the-rules/.  I also used the Vintage Dictionary stamp http://techniquejunkies.com/vintage-dictionary-page/  for punching out the small squares.  Then I stamped - Love My Shoes http://techniquejunkies.com/love-my-shoes/  .  I only colored in the flowers because most of the shoe image would be tossed away.  I used a small flower punch and ;punched out an area within the stamped flower image.

All stamped images were colored in with Copic Markers.  I used a border punch and 2 layering square punches.   I stamped the lady first, then placed the layered squares, and then stamped the  two sentiments.  I swiped my Winkastella pen the dress and the hat, and the decorative part on the shoes.