Heart2Heart Challenge: Inspiration Photo

First of all, Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans!!  I hope everyone takes a moment today to stop and reflect on the freedoms we have and the sacrifices that have been made to preserve our liberty.  I hope you see some pretty fantastic fireworks, too!  :-)


This week is my first week as a member of the Design Team for Heart2Heart Challenges, and I had so much fun with it!   There are some awesome things happening over at H2H in July.  We have some great prize sponsors this month....Sandra Van Woerden (click here to see her blog) and Tonya Whitehurst  (click here to see her blog).  Be sure to check out their blogs and leave them a little love!  They're offering some great prize packages this month.  Winners are randomly selected from all of the entries for the month, so you definitely want to play along for a chance to grab those goodies!  :-)  And, in addition to the new DT members starting this month, Tracy Oleksak is joining us as a guest DT member for the month of July.  Her blog is here. I'm looking forward to seeing her beautiful artwork in the next few weeks!

So let's get down to business.....Take a look at the photo below - what inspires you? The shapes? Colors? Layout?  The challenge this week is to create a project using this picture as an inspiration:

When I saw this picture, two things immediately jumped out at me...the two colors that reminded me of Lagoon and Smoothie, and the way the picture is arranged like a filmstrip.  So I decided to use those two elements as my starting point.  Here is what I ended up with:

I loved the color combination in the picture, so I used Lagoon and Smoothie cardstock to make this card.  I cut out the three squares to create a filmstrip effect , much like the inspiration picture (well, I actually used my Cricut to cut them out!).

It's hard to see in the picture (darn lighting!...I really need to figure out how to make a lightbox!), but this card is blinged out with Bitty Sparkles, which I adore (I even have a tiny sparkle that looks just like a bitty sparkle on my big toes right now, to go with my pedicure!).  Here's a closer picture.  If you click on it, it should enlarge so you can see details better:

Can you tell that the panel with the squares cut out is popped up with dimensional tape? 

About an inch and a half of the front panel has been cut off the bottom, and the sentiment is actually stamped on the inside of the card, so when you open it, it looks like this:

I can't wait to see what everyone else creates this week!  Make sure you post your entry over at H2H challenges (click here).  The only stipulation is that Close To My Heart products must be used in your artwork (but it does not have to be 100% CTMH).  If you use other products, please let us know what you used.  Good luck, and thanks for taking a peek at my blog today!

Materials list (all items are CTMH, except where noted):

-paper:  Lagoon cs, Smoothie cs, White Daisy cs

-stamp sets:  Circle Together (flower), Flower Pot (sentiment), Friendship Alphabet Small (dot between the words)

-inks: Lagoon, Smoothie

Embellishments:  Bitty Sparkles

Other: Cricut (George cartridge...squares), Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder, sanding block, Martha Stewart Doily Lace border punch, Dimensional Tape