Bad khaki pants got me stamping!

Huh??? Well, you know how one project sort of leads to another??? The khaki pants weren't directly responsible for my ACTUALLY designing and stamping a card this afternoon, but they definitely got the ball rolling! I'll spare you every why and wherefore, but the card below came about because my husband and I tackled a closet cleaning/shopping project last weekend. Let's just say that he was in dire need of some new clothing choices.

A trip to the mall resulted in the much-needed pants and some other items, including a couple of new belts. Properly storing these new belts required a trip to find some sort of hook system, as the old system was failing miserably. In the process of looking for a suitable way to hang the belts, I happened to come across a very nice-looking rack of hooks that would substantionally upgrade the towel rack in my son's bathroom.

After an afternoon of removing the old towel rack, patching the wall, and installing the new set of hooks, it became painfully obvious that this improvement now made painting the wall a necessity. I mentioned this to my daughter, Melissa, and a whole new chapter (read: big project!) unfolded! Before I knew it we were looking at bathroom accessories, searching for the inspiration we needed to redo Erik's bath! And before I knew it, Melissa was telling me that she thought some version of Gable Green would be a great idea for the new paint color. Erik said he didn't care what color we painted the bathroom--AS LONG AS IT WASN'T PINK--but I'm not sure this shade of green is what we should be putting in a basement bathroom.

Decorator Melissa's vision for this room came from the liner of a storage basket we found (see striped fabric in photo)--except that she didn't like stripes; she wanted dots. We found some different-sized round mirrors to hang on one of the walls, and Melissa decided that painting a colored circle around each of the mirrors would be a cool thing. Okay, that has potential. So off we were to look at paint samples. . .

Hey! I spent last weekend shopping for menswear, and now this weekend is all about a bathroom??? That was when I decided that I needed to take a few minutes to get in some stamping!!! So, inspired by the mirrors, the dots, and the paint samples we brought home, I grabbed some cardstock, chose a layout sketch from this site I'd saved in my favorites, and got busy. I'm proud to say that 15 minutes later I had a finished card! Man, that was fun!!



Details: Stamp Set--Full of Life; Paper--Certainly Celery, Brilliant Blue, Brocade Blue, Baja Blue, Whisper White; Ink--Brilliant Blue, Versamark; Other--Silver Embossing Powder, Circle punches (1", 3/4", 1/2"), Brocade Blue 5/8" grosgrain ribbon, silver elastic cord, Dimensionals.

I covered a piece of Whisper White cardstock with Versamark and two rounds of silver embossing powder so that I would have some "representation" of the mirrors that are slated for this redecorating project; I just punched circles from the embossed piece. Three strands of silver cording put together took the place of the silver ribbon I would have liked to have. And I just had to use the John Lennon quote on the card, since it so typifies what my days have been like lately.

It was great fun to "sneak" a stamping project into the end of the afternoon. I highly recommend it!

I'll let you know how the redecorating comes along!