Friendship

Happy Thursday to everyone! What a week this has been...
I first want to welcome my new followers!  Thank you to everyone now following my blog and for all of your wonderful comments!  They keep me going when the inspiration starts to lack, like it did this week.

All week I have been struggling with all these wonderful ideas in my head that seem so beautiful and perfect and I start to make one of them...and it stalls...I can't find the right paper...or my colors don't match...or the whole thing just looks awful...it's so frustrating!  So I turn to other blogs for inspiration...and see all the other beautiful projects everyone else has made and I get upset that what I make, in my mind, doesn't ever seem to be that good!  Ugh!  Am I being petty?  Does anyone else have that problem?  I'd like to know that I'm not the only one that goes through this...

Anyway...that problem came up with my card today.  It originally started out with green colors.  But again, I couldn't get any greens to match and none of the elements I was using worked in the colors I had chosen...it was frustrating and I had a moment of weakness but then I pulled myself together, turned to my scraps pile to see what papers I had in there that matched and started churning on this:

While I do love how this card turned out, there are things I feel should have been done differently.  The embossing on the scallop circle shouldn't have been inked...that blue doesn't match very well so when I look at the card my eyes draw to the bright blue swirls instead of enjoying the beauty of the roses and sentiment.  In my attempt to dull that down, I made little rose buds and stuck them behind the bow, but they are hard to see and the greenery around them takes over and sort of drowns the little white buds...
The big roses I had quilled up yesterday just playing around.  My wonderful husband broke down and made me a 'poor mans' quilling tool (he cut the ends off a long needle and wrapped the stem in duct tape :) )  It works quite well and is much easier than trying to use my fingers :)

So tell me (if you wish), do you struggle with card ideas?  What process do you take for making a card-theme then colors then elements, or elements then colors then theme?  Or something totally different?  I'm just curious how others go about their card making crafts :)

This card is entered in the following challenges:
    Mojo Monday Sketch #231
    Kaboodle Doodles #109-Think Spring, Include Flowers
    The Pink Elephant #138-Lots of Layers
    CES Challenge #75-Flower Frenzy
    Stamp, Scrap & Doodle-Use Your Stash

Oh forgot to tell you where the parts came from :)  All the frames were cut from the Cricut Lacy Labels cartridge.  The scalloped border under the ribbon is a cut file from Birds Cards.  The roses are a scallop cut file I created myself after looking at several designs and tutorials :)

Thanks for stopping by!!