It may sound counterintuitive but when you feel blocked one of the best ways to break out of the creative rut is to confine yourself to a limited set of colors or to a certain sketch.

This week I decided to participate in Dawn McVey’s Raspberry Suite Color Challenge.

The colors were already picked for me and all I had to do is to come up with the design. My design is inspired by Kristina Werner’s last MACM.

As you can see I took the colors and the design idea and had made them mine, but more importantly, I have shattered my creative block and kept on creating other cards, layouts and ATCs afterward.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Cut your card base (8½” by 5½”) and fold in half (into 4¼” by 5½” card).
2. Cut the yellow patterned paper to 3″ by 5″.
3. Stamp the yellow strip with the border text stamp with versamark ink and heat emboss it with clear embossing powder.
4. Stamp your greeting on the bottom of the yellow strip with permanent brown ink, using individual letter stamps.
5. Punch a circle at the center of the top part of the strip.
6. Tie a ribbon around the yellow strip.
7. Cut 2″ strip of the brown patterned paper and punch one side with the border punch.
8. Adhere the brown strip to the back side of the yellow strip, by applying adhesive to the edge of the yellow strip. Allow only the decorative border to show.
9. Before adhering the patterned paper to the card base, lay it over the card base where you’d like to position it and mark the circle with a pencil.
10. Stamp your image inside the pencil circle with brown ink, then heat emboss the image with clear embossing powder.
11. When the ink is completely dry, erase the pencil mark and adhere the patterned paper with foam dots.
12. Round the corners of the card base.
13. Go over the image with a layer of Stickles glitter glue and let dry.

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