July Swaps

July's Card Swap: This month's card swap on the message board is "fruit".  I found the watermelon stickers in my stash and several papers that sort of coordinated with them.  Then I went looking for a sketch idea.  I found my inspiration in Mojo Monday sketch #483.  The result is what you see in the picture above.  I used rectangular pieces of multiple papers to create an interesting background.  I then stuck the stickers to white card stock to create narrow mats around the watermelon.  The sentiment is from Sassy's LLC.  I inked the edge with brown, then matted on a punched green mat and a brown decorative die cut mat (Spellbinders Splendid Circles).

Inside:

Inside I have a couple more watermelon pieces & scraps of some of the papers from the front.

Materials Swap - Plaid/Check/Gingham - my supplies:

Here's a look at the materials I sent to my partner - slimline card base, plaid paper, denim paper, white card stock with stamped greeting, small piece of brown suede paper, two tools (hammer & wrench) made from Spellbinders All the Tools die set.

And here's the card I made using these materials:

I can't take full credit for this design.  It was adapted from one I found on Pinterest here.  I'm not sure who created it, but if you follow that link, you can see that the person had created a pair of jeans.  I added the plaid shirt and my own touches - including suede paper for the belt - but definitely took my inspiration from that card.  I usually see jeans stitching lines in yellow or orange.  Since yellow wouldn't show well on the paper, I used a fine-line orange pen to create the stitching lines.  I really liked the way it turned out.

Materials Swap Plaid/Gingham/Checked from my partner:

Above are the materials I got from my partner.  

Card I made from these materials:

And a second card I made using her materials with my own card base and a couple of deer from my stash.

 

 

Digi-Swap #1:

This swap requires that I use printed digital downloads and meet at least one other challenge on the MB I frequent.  Here I used 3 different patterned papers as well as met the "letter challenge" with D=Dog.  I cut the patterned pieces as you can see, and inked the edges of all.  I added a little dog picture I cut from a calendar to be my focal.  It looked pretty plain, so I added some muddy paw prints.  It still felt like it needed a little something more, so I added a few punched circles from the blue print and scattered them along the card front.  

Inside:

As you can see, I used similar elements on the inside to add a bit of interest.

 Digi-Swap #2:

The sky paper was a digital printout.  I narrowly matted it with black and added a black border.  The sentiment was one printed and die cut with my Mom's stamps & dies.  The gnome and heart balloons were all created from Spellbinders cutting dies (Gnome Drive Holiday, Up in the Air View).