Woot-Woot – it’s the weekend! I have a SUPER SIMPLE Card for you today! I think that this is the fastest card I have made in a L O N G time. The beauty is the stamp does all of the work for you!

The details are truly unique in this stamp set. In my eyes, this is a very different stamp set for Stampin’ Up! and I will say that when you stamp it – it looks elegant even before you add some color!

The biggest tip I can give you is…MAKE SURE YOUR STAMP IS CONDITIONED WELL. I will go into that…but you can see the boldness of the letters in “THANKS” that you want to make sure that when you stamp….your image is clean and crisp!

There really is not much to say about this card because it is so straight forward but I will chat a wee bit about the coloring that I did. I used my old faithful go-to, the aqua painters.

We all seem to pick the coloring medium that works best for us and the aqua painters are my comfort zone. You could easily use the watercolor pencils, the blender pens or even just the markers….this is a very forgiving area to add color to – just have fun!

I did a wash of So Saffron and then went over with Daffodil Delight where there are the darker sketchier areas of the stamped image. For the leaves I did the same thing….colored the leaves in Pear Pizzazz and then went back over with Wild Wasabi wherever there were the sketched lines….super easy!

Earlier this week I had shared with you that I often pick my color scheme for my card from the DSP Paper that I use for the envelope. Well, today I did not do that (confession of an honest stamper) because I think that I was just so darn excited to start to color away that I never thought about the envelope.

It worked out. We always seem to have yummy paper that will work for the feel and design of a card but remember….if not – just go with a solid coordinating color of paper and perhaps emboss it….that will always do the trick.

You can see that Old Olive is the “green” used in the below DSP of Delightful Daisy….and yep, you are right….I did not use Old Olive – another great example of “don’t get stuck in the rigid box” – always look to the outside! 😀 

Before we leave….let’s chat about the conditioning of the stamp. I have blogged about this but sometimes you cannot hear it too much. I like ti take my new stamps and stamp them up really, really good with Versa Mark Ink and then stamp, stamp , stamp.

For those of you that say….what do you do with retired cardstock???….well yep, this is what I do. I have card stock cut down to smaller sizes and I grab a piece and use it to stamp my images when I condition them.

For a stamp like this…you might need to give it some extra love. What do I mean??? Easy….do this method….clean your stamp (I use the Absorber Towels) as you can really get them super squeaky clean and then repeat….stamp with Versa Mark….even squish the stamp around (twist it with your hand) then do a couple regular stamps…..etc….

Now you can go to the black ink and see the results. You really want to make sure that you have great coverage with your stamp image to have that solid clean and crisp stamp. PRESTO!!!! Your stamp is conditioned and you can always reach for this and be good to go!

Now go take this day and make it yours! We are hanging close to home….Oscar, (the perfect horse) had a little surgery on Thursday so I need to be close…he is fine – just needs to be in for a couple of days to make sure that he does not pull stitches….of course that gives me time to “be the Mom” to him and give him extra carrots and brushing!

A perfect day in my eyes….I hope that you enjoyed this card…I confess – I am amazed with how fast it comes together and the end result is a beautiful and unique work of art from the heart!

Just in case you have some “me time”…how about playing the Tic Tac Toe Challenge….there is time to play and trust me, you will have fun – there is something exciting about looking at the elements on the board and then letting you creativity go!