I Challenge You Wednesday: Scoring Board Backgrounds

If I want to be inspired by everything BUT a certain thing, all I have to do is choose it for a challenge. :) I've had scads of ideas running through my head, and I've been working feverishly every night to get those ideas onto cards and other projects ... but none of those projects involved using my scoring board for a card background. So I had to make myself sit down and do something for the challenge - last night!

Here's what I came up with:



You can see the scoring better on this first picture, but the second picture is actually a better photo of the card:



Supplies: stamps (Bird's Cards rose, Martha Stewart leaves, Studio G sentiment); paper (Making Memories, Dollar Tree notecard, The Paper Company); ink (Versamark with iridescent embossing powder and gold embossing powder, SU! Old Olive); MS scoring board; satin ribbon; Sizzlets tag die; MS PATP Iron Gate Fence border punch; dew drops.

I used the scoring board to make a diagonal scored background on both the background paper and the vellum. I thought it mimicked lattice a little bit. It was really easy to get perfectly-spaced diagonals. I have a Martha Stewart scoring board, so I just pulled out the envelope template that comes with it and lined up my paper against the slanted edge, scoring at every 1/2". Then I turned it and scored the other way, and it was done. Super easy!

I also popped the vellum section on dimensionals so it wouldn't blend in too much with the floral background.

I wanted to make a nice bow to go on the card, so I went back through all the tutorials I had bookmarked about how to make them painlessly. I remembered a tutorial using a fork, but that produces a tiny bow, even with my large serving fork as a base. So that got me to thinking - couldn't I just make a big fork shape out of cardboard and do it that way? And that's exactly what I did:



And then I discovered that I could also follow the instructions for the Bow Easy using this handy dandy little cardboard template. Those are the instructions I followed to make the bow on the card. The most helpful (and easiest) video tutorial is Gina K's. If you do a search on youtube, I'm sure you'll come up with it.

Basically, you decide about how big you want your bow to be (mine is roughly 4" wide). Then you cut your cardboard to that width. Then all you really need to do is cut a smallish slit in the middle of the cardboard (the outer two slits aren't necessary if you're wanting to make a bow that looks like the Bow Easy bow). Follow the directions on the video, and you're done!

My friend made a slew of cards for this challenge, so you really need to visit her blog and see what she did! :) Go back through the last few posts while you're there because she already shared a few sneak peeks over the last week or so.

Since I happened to use my favorite flower (the rose) and dry embossing (with my scoring board) on this card, I'm entering it into this week's Cuttlebug Spot challenge. And since I designed it with Mother's Day in mind, I'm also entering it into the Stampin Sisters in Christ challenge for this week. I don't always play along with the challenges, but when a project fits, I might as well, right? :)