CAS with Penny Black

   Here is is Sunday again and time for a new weekly challenge over at the Outlawz Sunday Clean and Simple Challenge site.  The challenge this week is:  Black and White Only.  If you get a chance, pop on over and give it a go -- it's a lot of fun!

For this challenge I decided to use one of my favorite Penny Black stamps - a simple tree, called Fantasy.

Penny Black; Bon-Ton Stamps

The card stock is from Bazzill.  The stamp was embossed with Ranger embossing powder and Martha Stewart pearls were added to the tree.  The Franz Kafka quote from Bon-Ton is also embossed.  The lines around the card were drawn with a white gel pen. 

Here I adjusted the dark tones on the picture so the pearls show up better.  Can you see the pearls?:

This is when I decided to add the white gel pen lines around it, a bit too stark don't you think, without them? 

Keeping with my resolution to include goofs and all on this blog (as my learning tool), I have to add the pictures of my mess-up for this one - - this was actually my first attempt at this card.
   Understand, that my sewing machine is one that I would never use to make clothes with -- it won't hold tension, except when it wants to itself -- never mind what I desire.  I tried taking it in and having it fixed, but the fixes never took.  I was at the point in my life, where I knew I would never again get the urge to sew my own clothes, so I was on the verge of assigning the machine to the rubbish bin.  Then I re-thought the issue and decided to keep it around for when I want a little stitching on my scrapbook pages or on a card, because in that case I rarely want perfect sewing -- just a background of some texture.  In this case though, I wanted a little more than the machine was willing to give me.  Instead of white gel pen, I wanted thread.  This is what happened:

See the mess in the upper right corner?  And the pulls all over?  Not what I envisioned.  I did try "saving" it by adding larger pearls to the corners:

But, I didn't really like the look of that.  So, I chopped it down and made a smaller card (I'll spare you the picture -- you get the idea).

Because, I had originally thought I wanted stitching around the edges and I knew it might take several tries with my machine, I had stamped and embossed several copies of Penny's Fantasy tree.  Not wanting them to go to waste, but not wanting each card exactly the same.  I tried using clear rhinestones for one card.

I like the pearls better.  Don't you think?  Here's a close up of the rhinestones:

At this point, I had two panels left stamped with the tree and I decided to break out of the "black and white only" box and add red.  That to me is the greatest part of participating in challenges, they give you a starting point and you get to decide exactly where and how far you go from that point.  So. here is the tree with black, white and red.

Do you like the red rhinestones?  It gives the card a totally different look from the white pearls or even the clear rhinestones.   I went back to that crazy sewing machine and tried adding red metallic thread.  Not perfect, but then I knew it wouldn't be -- but it did come out better than the white cotton thread did. 

Here's a close-up of the red rhinestones:

I had a lot of fun with this challenge.  And ended up with several cards that I like -- all different, but the same.    Don't you think you might like to join us, too? 

May you always keep the ability to see beauty and thus never grow old!