{capture the moment}: 4

Thanks for all your well wishes for my first television appearance. It went well. I will be sure to do another post about that subject soon!

Here is today's little sneak peek of one of the NEW stamp sets to be release on October 15th from Papertrey Ink! This project was inspired by the Eat Cake digital kit available through the Paper Crafts Magazine website. I love the cake theme because it can be used for a variety of occasions, such as birthday, wedding or anniversary.

First, here is the three-tiered cake. Notice the scalloped edge to each layer. (Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE scallops?!?!?)

One of the super clever design elements for this cake is this floral image (if I do say so myself!) . It allows you to easily add floral embellishments to all three tiers perfectly, every time!

Remember when doing this type of technique that it is best to start with your lightest color (the cake) and then work to your darkest color (the flowers).

If you look real close at the floral accents, you will notice that they all have open centers. I don't know about you, but whenever I see a flower image I want to add something FUN to the middle! These particular flowers are begging for it! Whether you add mini rhinestones (as I did here), Stickles, brads, pearls, beads, liquid applique or anything else you dream up, the added detail will be just the perfect finishing touch!

The sentiments in this set are VERY innovative and I just LOVE them! Almost all of them come in two pieces. Here is an example of one. You might see this part of the image and think that this sentiment makes no sense. The truth is that it is only part of the overall result.

The "How" and "it is" are perfectly spaced to allow room for "sweet" to be inserted. You may be wondering why this is so significant. I have found that when designing a card, there have been many times when I needed to be able to integrate two key ink colors into my sentiment to achieve visual balance. I would always end up using markers to ink the different area of the stamp, which ended up being messy and unreliable, not to mention difficult to do when mass-producing cards. Since the sentiments are separate in this set, the look is quick & easy, allowing you to expand your design capabilities with hardly any extra effort. I hope that this is a design element you will find inspiring and useful!

And here is my final project! I love it's simplicity. I love how by just changing the sentiment, this exact card be used for an anniversary or wedding. Notice the one rounded corner as well. If you are familiar with my work, you would have noticed that this is something that I do often. A single rounded corner can really help break up any redundancy that you may have with straight edges within your design. In this particular case, it helps to draw the eye down to the sentiment as well. Another reason why I like this design element is because it can be the solution to any "just needs a little something" dilemma because it has no style or color boundaries. It can be added to virtually any project without being "too much".