Lockhart Warm Socks.....in floral

Today I have my Josey girl home sick with the flu, poor thing! As a mom, I really hate that helpless feeling of not being able to make my child feel better. So today, I'm hangin' with my girl, bringing her crackers and 7 Up, fluffing her pillow and just keeping her company. So when she's dozing, I catch up on some stamping....which brings me to today's creations......Get Well Soon cards. How appropriate right? These cards are a continuation of my last post where I showed you this same Lockhart Warm Socks stamp and the CHF Open Plaid Backgrounder. All patterned paper is from K and Company. The *Get Well Soon* sentiment is from Papertrey Ink. All images are colored in with Copic markers. Also for the cards today, I drew in little flowers and polka dots on the socks, an idea that was inspired by my friend Debbie Olson. This first card below is just a simple card featuring an ol' reliable layout that I use often. I love the Karen Lockhart's sentiment on the top of the card.
For this next card, I used a snippet of that background paper I had left over from a previous card..but I added in some tiny rust colored flowers to match the socks and floral patterned paper. The teeny little flower is from a Papertrey Ink stamp set. And notice the *get well soon* sentiment. I stamped it on a scrap of grid patterned paper and just tucked it under the ribbon, love that! I did the same thing for the card above and the next card coming up.
For the card below, I used the last little morslet of that Open Plaid Backgrounder design but colored in the wide lines with a mustard marker and added those same teeny Papertrey Ink flowers but in a yellow ink.
When I was done with all my cards, I thought they need just a little something else. I thought. Thought some more. And then I got out some AMuse scallop clear stickers and by golly that did the trick! So scroll back up and look closely at the stamped images. They're all shiny. If you go to my first photo, you can see the stickers really well.

Tip of the day: Okay, let's talk about *white space*. No, it's not the surface of my winter white body begging for some Spring time sunshine!! LOL! White space is what I refer to as areas in your cards left blank...left alone.......to let the eye have a little rest and to allow your images a little breathing room. If you take a look at the first two cards, you'll notice that the stamped sock images have very little white space around them. I wanted to keep the focus on the main image and also allow as much of the patterned to show through in the background. Now look at the last card above. There is LOTS of white space around the stamped image. Do you notice the different *feel* to the cards. The first two cards allow your eye to go back and forth from the main focal image, then to the patterned paper and so forth. This last card keeps the focus on the main image pretty much because it takes front and center in that big white space. The image *breaths* a little better, the card looks *lighter* with all that white space. The sentiment and background plaid paper become secondary accents without overwhelming the card.

So my actual tip for the day is this: When stamping your images onto your white cardstock, always leave a bunch of white space around the image. Then when you actually get around to using that colored image, you'll have the choice of leaving that white space there or cropping your image to where it has very little white space. It's a good thing!

Supplies: Backgrounder stamp, Warm Socks, Get Cozy sentiment, and Copic markers all available from Ellen's online store.