Positive & Negative

Punches are really fun to use to add just the perfect accent to your projects, aren't they?  A girl can never have too many punches.  Now, I'm not really a "gotta have the trendy products" kind of gal (have you seen the jeans I wear?!). When butterflies first came out several years ago, I thought, "Eh."  But the longer they have been out, the more they've grown on me.  Luckily for me, now that I full-out love them, they are still very much in fashion and I own a few styles of butterfly punches.  It's always fun to use the same punch in different colors.  Hence these cards using Stampin' Up!'s butterfly punch and stamp sets:

I like experimenting with color.  And it's fun to put the cools of blue, green, and purple with the warms of orange, red, or yellow.  They balance each other nicely.

I do also like to get the most mileage out of the tools I buy so sometimes instead of recycling the negative images from my punching adventures, I actually like to incorporate them into my projects.  For example, this card here:

I just cut the negative image into a rectangle, dry embossed it using my Big Shot and then put a scrap of cute patterned paper popped up on dimensionals behind.  There again, the cool blue and warm orange.  I tried to be creative with the embossing at the bottom of the card.  I don't love the bottom embossing but it's not too bad.  A simple card making use of scraps.  I had a few more negative butterfly shapes and patterned paper scraps I love so I decided to incorporate them into a scrapbook layout.  WARNING:  Photo quality is horrible so if you click to enlarge, don't throw up because of dizziness. :)

Because I'm in love with these particular patterned papers and this color combo right now, I decided to make a layout of my little crafting corner of the world.  The red starburst paper is Making Memories, The robin-egg blue is My Mind's Eye, the mushroom paper is Imaginisce, and the yellow flower is Sassafrass (I think).  Those cute blue foam letter stickers are American Crafts Thickers and match that blue MME paper perfectly.  The smaller black & white letter stickers are Making Memories.  And yep, that's my old kitchen table in the corner of my master bedroom.  My Kitchen Table Studio.  I know.  I'm so creative I can hardly stand myself.  But whatever,  LOL.  There again, you'll see the patterned paper "popped" under the white negative butterfly shapes.  I decided not to emboss them this time, because I didn't want that bottom corner to appear any heavier than it does already.  I added some cute buttons and some other smaller butterfly punched shapes to try and balance out the other bottom corner.  I purposefully adjusted the color on the photo so that it looked a little vintage.  On a side note, all the layouts I do about me personally, I do in 8 1/2 x 11, and they go in their own album.

Tomorrow, I'll post a layout I did that involves stamping.

ThANkS for stopping by!