The Sweet Spot!

Mar 30, 2013 | Design Tips, Thank You | 1 comment

Happy Saturday!

Todays post is another Designer Series Paper card. I'm not going to even explain myself…I just can't help it. I see patterned paper and my brain goes into overdrive. This paper really is pretty. (I know you know that, but I had to say it). 

You can't see it, but my card base is Very Vanilla card stock, and I used a combination of Tea For Two Designer Series Paper and Soft Subtles Designer Series Paper Stack. I'll say this again…I bet Stampin' Up! knew long before we did that these two totally different series of Designer Paper would coordinate so beautifully.

I layered some patterned paper on my card front and added a coordinating border. The flagged end banners were hand cropped. I punched a 1 1/4" circle (cut it in half), and layered them across the top of the card front. I embellished this group with some very Vanilla Bakers Twine.

My "Focal Point" was created with the Decorative Label Punch and the Bitty Butterfly Punch. The sentiment banner was also hand cropped and the sentiment, from the From My Heart stamp set was stamped with Early Espresso ink. I used a few pearls to decorate the butterflies.

It was fun to coordinate all the colors and patterns.

DESIGN TIP #4 – THE SWEET SPOT: In my last post, I talked about the "Rule of Thirds" – dividing your card into an imaginary "tic tac toe" grid – 3 equal parts horizontally, and 3 equal parts vertically. 

So, with that in mind, to create a "Sweet Spot", you would place your important elements such as your sentiment or focal point at an imaginary intersection that you created in the "Rule of Thirds".

Every card has a sweet spot. It's part of your card's "composition". To help illustrate this, I created a Rule of Thirds grid for this card and snapped a quick picture. It happens that both my Focal Point and Sweet Spot are in the same place in this card. The cropped banners point downward and draw your eye to the focal point. 

I didn't draw on the card itself, but created a cellophane overlay to show you. This was my card in the making…If you look closely, you'll see that my label and sentiment banner are already attached and sit at an intersection point in my grid.

Above is my card from my last post. Take a close look at the composition of this card. My focal point is the circles, but my sweet spot is the sentiment banner and the linen thread embellishment. If you placed a cellophane grid over this card, you would see that the sweet spot is placed at an intersected point in the grid.

On today's card, I punched three butterflies and placed them touching three intersecting points on my imaginary Rule of Thirds grid.

Aren't three's wonderful? 

Happy Stampin' and do it By Design!

Debbie

CLICK HERE TO SHOP MY ONLINE STORE AT STAMPIN' UP!