I know you all know that I have a rainbow obsession, so of course I am throwing out there yet again another rainbow Color Me Monday with a slight twist. I thought I would use today's post to go over a couple of design elements for card making. I am always getting questions about it and I thought you all might enjoy the information.
First off lets take a look at our palette.
By the way this photo I have used for inspiration is a beautiful blouse sold in the Etsy store MXArtsCrafts. The blouse is HANDMADE by the talented Sofía Navarro! You can see her items HERE!
Beautiful colors right? I saw this and it reminded me of a card I have been dying to make with my new Kindred Stamp set Frida Kahlo!
Let's see my finished sample first and see how the colors were inspired by Sofia's artfully made blouse.
I did watercolors for the background, and Copics for little Frida. (I will list everything down below). The watercolor consisted of embossing the background and then just dropping watered down color into the embossed flowers. Nothing fancy. I wanted colors as bright as Sofia's artwork and I wanted it to be card that really had some POP to it. I think color brings joy and of course sending joy to people is what I love!
Alright lets talk design tips. I get asked all the time about design tips and tricks for making any project look it's best. I thought I would share some of those tips with you now because they have always helped me. I am going to be using my card elements from above to illustrate my point.
Lets start here. Every example I will show is perfectly great on it's own. Every expression of your art is wonderful the way it is because it's you on a card! These are just some design elements I have been asked about before and thought I would share.
Here is the card on a background with the sentiment. Perfectly cute, and fine on it's own. In design elements you would refer to the image as floating. The eye needs somewhere to land. Your eye competes for Frida or the sentiments. Making her more of a focal point would draw the eye right to her.
Here's an example of what I mean. See how your eye goes straight to the circle and Frida is framed inside. Your eye goes to her and you look at her little details on her. She is the focal point.
Lets's take it further. What if we added more layers and textures? Little harder now right. It's busy even if we add the focal point will she get lost with all that?
The answer is she won't, but she will compete for attention. So how do we fix that? 
We do something called grounding and framing. Grounding means we have put something heavy in texture or color for the focal point to sit on.We have that great strip of color to make our focal point circle really POP! Also the added little hearts and flowers details on the edges act as a frame to contain little Frida. We will use the sentiment strips to complete the frame!
Finally Embellishing! My favorite! Remember that things in nature most often appear in nature in odd numbers. So when adding your embellishments try numbers of 1, 3, 5, etc.
In terms of even numbers when you are going for a more linear look or a balanced look you might have the same even number mirroring each other.
But for this festive Frida card exploding with color, I used the more is more method and placed 11 rhinestones on!
I hope you are inspired by these colors, and these design samples help you some way, and if it's not your thing . . . That's okay! Just keep doing your creative thing! Remember creating these small pieces of art is just as much about your personal expression as it is about creating something to give. Listen to that voice and take time out to create! You deserve it!
Supplies used:
Kindred Stamps Frida Kahlo
Watercolors
Copics
Brutus|Monroe Raven Embossing Powder
Rhinestones
Circle Cutting Dies with scalloped frame
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