Simple and Charming

I got the Charming stamp set a while back when it was on sale and bundled with some Simply Adorned jewelry pieces. I used the stamps and I'm enjoying the Simply Adorned pieces, but I felt like if I was going to get my usual required mileage out of a stamp set (if a set doesn't pull it's weight around here, out it goes) then I wanted to make some cute cards with it, too.

Here's one that I liked. It's very simple, with nothing done to the card besides the focal point, and extremely muted, laid back colors… but it just works. I started with a Crumb Cake base and layers, with an Elegant Eggplant mat. You could use Perfect Plum, too–I went back and forth between those two and finally settled on the eegplant, but they both looked great.

The word block is stamped in Early Espresso, and the flower image was colored with markers in Always Artichoke and Elegant Eggplant. I stamped the large Crumb Cake mat piece with Crumb Cake ink and the small medallion and flourish stamps from the same set.

It would have been an extremely plain, flat card except for the addition of some shiny Crumb Cake seam binding ribbon (Occasions Mini Catalog) and the distressed edges (I used the Cutter Kit). and then of course–Shimmer Spray!

You could continue to juice it up with a background stamp, another matting layer of First Edition DSP, or some brads or pearls on the seam binding. But sometimes, simple is best. And don't forget to actually SEND it… the best embellishment any card could ever have is a postage stamp.