Stepping outside my comfort zone

It happens. I get into crafting ruts where I tend to gravitate toward the same techniques or same type of embellishments over and over again. Maybe it's laziness, but I choose to believe I just go with what I'm comfortable with.

So when I opened my Guest Design Team kit from The Mosy Scrapper and found two packages full of embellishments from Gauche Alchemy, I felt a mixture of excitement and panic. Everything from beads and glitter to playing cards and poker chips..it was almost overwhelming to think what I could whip up that would spotlight that assortment of color and texture. But once I started playing with the stuff, it all fell into place.

I decided the little silver beads looked a lot like christmas ornaments, so I created this layout with last year's Christmas photos and the Creative Imaginations holiday line.

This letter "R" was actually an assignment from my boss to "personalize" the letter. I had covered it in the papers a while back, but couldn't decide what else it "needed." The Guache Alchemy kit was perfect. The poker chip was a great symbol of how lucky I feel; the "Admit One" ticket was a symbol of my need to be involved in a lot of things; and the domino symbolized my love of games and the importance of family (my grandfather played dominos almost every day of his adult life).

For the card, I hand-cut a heart out of textured cardstock, applied a light coating of Shimmerz and adhered it to the cardstock. Then I used the beads in the kit to outline the circle. I stitched the red ribbon across the bottom as an accent.

And now...for the winner of my scraproom drawing...

Congratulations to CHERYL!! And thanks for posting a link to your scraproom! Please email me your address (robmab at yahoo dot com) and I will ship out your Pink Paislee paper pack!