a little card with lots of encouragement

When I saw this week's sketch at Retro Sketches I knew what stamps I wanted to ink up and I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to use for embellishments but then this one took on a life of its own!  I had to keep the card size at 3 1/2 x 3 1/2" to make good use of the stamps I wanted to use for the front and I had to vary from the sketch a bit and use 4 strips instead of the 3 shown in the sketch, but I tried a couple of new things on this card and was pleased with how they turned out.  Despite the card's small size, I still managed to pack a lot of encouragement into it and I plan to send it to my daughter for a little pick me up  as she has a really busy week coming up at college and she's at that midway point from when this term started and spring break begins.

details:  All products are from CTMH.  I started with the Laughing Lola.  The strips are made from the flip side of the magenta patterned paper and the zip strip from that paper.  I started off with the frame stamp in the Family Photo set (a Hostess Rewards set from the autumn/winter '13 Idea Book) and the sentiment is from the Paisley Perfect set stamped in black ink on Lagoon cardstock.  I have been experimenting with CTMH's  shimmer tape and found it can be cut with decorative edged scissors so I covered the frame image with black shimmer trim and trimmed with scalloped edged scissors.  For added embellishments, I used purple glitter gems and made my own bakers twine by twisting black and purple embroidery floss together with a strand of metallic silver I pulled from some metallic twine from another kit.  For the inside of the card, I used the A Typeface set in black ink.  I used gold embossing powder with the frame from the Laughing Lola cardmaking WOTG and the other sentiment from the Paisley Perfect set on black cardstock.  I used the Artbooking Cricut cartridge to cut the "be yourself" banner and the sentiment "always and forever" and then just fussy cut as I just wanted to use the "always."  I also used the Artbooking cartridge to cut the "1 of a kind" out of the gold cardstock that came in the Lola pack and "sweet" banner out of Gypsy cardstock.  Below are some pictures of how I lined up the shimmer trim on the frame stamp, just in case anyone needs a visual (which I usually do the first time I try something, lol.)