Papertrey Ink September 2017 Blog Hop

It's time for the monthly Papertrey Ink Blog Hop.  This is a chance for Papertrey's customers to show off our card making skills and share them with other customers and happens on the 25th of each month.  As soon as I saw Nichole's inspiration image this time around, I immediately thought of "Songbirds" Stamps and Dies.  I only have the dies.  The stamps have been on my wish list for a long time but I've always had other sets that I want more so I haven't gotten that set yet. I think it will be a lot of fun to see how many others thought of the same set.

I studied the inspiration image for a little while and decided that I also needed a few images from "Spruce & Sprigs" and some others from "Gran's Garden" Stamp Sets to create my card. Last week's Make It Monday at Papertrey Ink featured this exact idea; mixing floral elements from a few different sets. While I had my card done last week, I made it specifically for the Blog Hop so I couldn't link up to last week's challenge.  We left town on Thursday afternoon and just returned home yesterday afternoon so I didn't have time to make a second card.

When I am stamping, I like to use the negative as a place holder in my MISTI to stamp these images so I cut two batches of each group of coordinating dies found here and here (my dies are still attached to each other as of this moment) so that I could have them ready when trying to figure out my arrangement. I always use Stamper's Select White Cardstock for this. I also cut a couple of the birds, three of the branches, and two of the plain backers for the birds from Pure Poppy, Olive Twist and True Black Cardstock respectively. To stamp the white and yellow sprigs, I used Brilliance Ink in Pure Platinum and Galaxy Gold. You would never know the white sprigs are stamped unless you saw them up close, but it's okay because that was what I was going for. I only used the little pods (stamped in Brilliance Rocket Red and Papertrey's Scarlet Jewel) from Gran's Garden and nothing else although originally I had intended to use the leaves. The leafy branches from Songbirds Dies have the stitch lines in the leaves and I thought they were a better match to the little cut outs on the birds. As you can see, I also only ended up using one of the birds.

The Songbirds banner was die cut from some gold and white music print paper I have and has the words, "On the first day of Christmas my true love gave" which fits in with the whole theme of Songbirds. I lined the die up on the paper so that the words would be on the banner.  

I played around with all of the elements until I got an arrangement that was pleasing to the eye and then mounted everything on a background panel of True Black Cardstock that had been die cut with a stitched rectangle die. I used Ranger Multi Medium Matte. I adhered that panel to a top folding card base made from Pure Poppy Cardstock for maximum visual impact. I've always loved Olive, Red and White together so tying in the neutral black was super easy. I also cut a white stitched rectangle for the inside of the card.    

Once I got finished with my card, I had to go back and add one small touch.  Can you find it? It's not the trees in the background although that is new, too! Thanks for stopping by today.  Have fun visiting all the wonderful projects that you'll find over at the Papertrey Blog!