Less is More Challenge - 'Rainbow'

So card number 2 today….. This card is for the Less is More Challenge which I read about in Beverley from Uniko Studio's post. She is GD there and offering one of the prizes!!

Do you ever have a card idea in your heard that you think will be amazing, but when you actually create it your heart just kind of sinks?? Well that's kind of how I feel about the card I have made for the challenge. I feel that it should work, but I just don't think it does??? Why bother posting it then you might ask….well, I am going to post it in the hope that some people who are much more experienced with card making, can maybe suggest how this card could work better.

When I heard the theme was rainbow, I straight away saw visions of 'rainbow' colours - which would mean lots of different colours of inks. I had a few of the typical rainbow colours, but not enough. I decided to head to Hobbycraft and spend just a little money!! I was having great success with Hobbycraft's own brand of ink and so planned to buy more of them. However, I saw a fabulous deal of 30 mini inks from Hobbycraft for only £10. I snapped it up straight away.

I knew the two stamps that I wanted to use - a peacock and a peacock feather. The peacock was bought from ebay last year and the feather was from Hobbycraft. I wanted the have the feathers in each rainbow colour and then have the round bits of the peacock's feathers (on the actual peacock) each rainbow colour - one of each.

I started with the feathers first. I don't have a die for the stamp and so I would have to cut them all by hand. I decided to draw around the edge of the stamp first and then stamp the image - this would give me a cutting guideline. Originally I was going to stamp the feathers on card, but then I decided that vellum would give a more feathery, light look. The red feather was done with an existing Hobbycarft ink that I had, the remainder done with the new inks. Oh, how different the two inks are……The red dried perfectly, but the new inks (which are very 'juicy' and state that they are pigment inks which I am now guessing are slow drying???!!) just took forever to dry. As a result, you can see that many ended up being smudged and the ink then transferred on to parts of my actual card…..aaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!

I embossed the actual peacock in silver (which I think looks beautiful) and cut it out using my circle thin lit. I was going to try and paint each of the circles of the feathers, but I had my stick on pearls in front of me and so I tried inking one in each rainbow colour, drink with my embossing heat tool and then attaching to the card….they are not perfect as it was a pretty fiddly task, but you can at least see what I was trying to achieve!!

The feathers were attached to the back of the circle with some double sided tape, and then the circle was attached to the main card with foam pads to give a bit of dimension.

It's one of these cards that I feel the 'idea' is great, but the actually card is not as good as the idea itself - does that make sense?? Perhaps actual feathers might have been better, or some feather dispersed between the stamped ones?? Any ideas much appreciated.

Here is the card anyway…..you can clearly see the smudges - sorry!!!!

Thanks, Laura xx