Inspiration Station January Blog Hop Challenge

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Happy New Year crafty peeps! Let’s get right into a crafty 2025!! This month’s inspiration photo gave me so many ideas that I decided I would actually scale my ideas down a bit. I loved the neutral tones and colors in the photo. By themselves, the brown tones would be just blah…but against the soft white background, they are framed in a way. So, rather than the blue of the bird that was the most obvious focal point that I first thought about focusing on, I decided to give attention to the browns by incorporating the blues into part of the background as a frame. I hope you like this project, and I hope you try some of these tips and techniques and join in the hop challenge (click the link below). If you do, be sure to tag me on Instagram @scrappystampthefunup, I’d love to see what inspired you from the inspiration photo!! See you all next month!

When I decide to create a card that focuses on a small detail as the main focal point, I like to use an A2 size card. I feel this is the best scale to bring attention to the small focal point. I also love to add depth and layer to a focus card by layering with different designs and textures of a background. I chose the two blues that I felt reflected the blue from the bird in the inspiration photo, as part of the background.

I decided to layer them up on an angle to add interest, and in order to keep the bold colors as part of the background, I decided to add a white panel over them, to anchor the focal point, but to add even more depth, I embossed this smaller panel with the Book Cover Engravings 3D embossing folder by Altenew.

Pro tip: if you find it hard to come up with a good anchoring background for a focal point card, pick supporting colors and layer them up in interesting ways and add monochrome texture i.e. embossing.

Next was to create the focal point for that comforting brown color of the leaves in the inspiration photo. I chose Stampin’ Up! inks in Copper Clay and Wild Wheat. I used the Stampin’ Up! Textured Floral stamp set and Bough punch to create the focal point leaves for the card. I used white embossing powder to lightly “frost” the tips of the leaves and then added just a touch of Hero Arts lacquer pen in Sparkle Clear because, there’s always room for sparkle 🙂 Before attaching them to the card with a coordinating twine bow, I rolled the leaves to give them some lift and realism.