Shabby days

Ooooooohhhhhhhh, I have been in heaven this past week. It seems that the color of choice this week has been green at various challenges and ya all know that my heart goes pitter pat when I see green.

This week's  photo challenge at The Card Concept is a very clean and graphic design. I am sure Ardyth was doing a happy dance when she saw this photo. She is one of the clean and graphic gals at The Card Concept. I can honestly say, I was not doing the happy dance! As a wild card designer, I was challenged to create a shabby chic card with this CAG photo. Hang on- me!! Shabby Chic!!! Say it aint so! Shabby chic will probably be the hardest style for me to do.

I went online to study up on shabby chic. What I noticed is that most shabby chick cards have two similar elements- doilies and ribbons and they are grunged up a bit- in a girly kinda way- not a Tim Holtz way (not there is anything wrong with Tim!!).

I just happen to have some doilies tucked away and I was even able to find them! They were stark white, which was not gonna work. I colored them with my copic markers.  I distress the edge of the card with scissors which just tore the card, but I left it go. I even got into the paper piercing trend, to mimic the head board in the photo. This addition ties the card together for me. Ribbon seemed like it would be to much, so I just added some butchers twine.

 There's a story for you- I asked my DH to pick me up some butchers twine at Kitchen Kapers to tie a roast with and he comes home with this HUGE roll of twine. I will never cook enough roasts in my life time to put a dent in this roll!

I digress- back to the card. The card felt like it was missing something with the doilies alone. I added flower embellishment and the sentiment. There you have it- A very clean and simple shabby chic card!

I hope you will play along with us this week at The Card Concept and challenge yourself to a style that is outside your comfort zone.