Thx for the Inspiration!

hello
Welcome to my blog.  It's a lovely sunny Friday, I've just put my groceries away and now I'm avoiding the ironing by writing my blog post ;)

It's Daring Cardmakers Day, and Miri's challenge this week is all about 

the Inspirers 

but not those Big-Name stars of the crafting world that everyone has heard of - this time we're giving a "shout out" to those lesser-known, clever and inspiring people you may know personally, or have come across by happy chance while wandering the web

I've known my cyber-space friend Joanne (aka Angelnorth) for years and years and years!  Joanne is the sort of person who if she doesn't know how to do something will scour forums, websites and elsewhere until she does know.  I have been guilty of short-cutting the research and just asking Joanne ;)
She is brilliant at white-space, CAS, and one-layer cards.  She does amazing things with stamps, stencils, inks, paints and other media and always manages to find interesting ways to use those - and use not-usually-thought-of-as-craft-stuff things - like the way she flattens out those empty tomato purée tubes, cuts them open, washes them out and uses the metal to make fabulous embellishments.  Somehow she sees things in a different way to the rest of us!
Her cards often look to be CAS (Clean and Simple), but I'm pretty sure that while the "Clean" bit may apply, "simple" is very much not how it is - there;'s an awful lot of time, effort and ingenuity in Joanne's creations!

After spending a while scrolling through her blog; Ambrosia and Iron I decided to use elements of one of her lovely one-layer cards in my own card.   First I'll show you the card I made.

And now here's the one it's based on, made by Joanne, which you can find more about HERE
 

So you can see how I much I failed in the white space and one-layer techniques, can't you?  Can you believe that Joanne's butterfly isn't standing out from the card - it's all inky trickery!

I knew I'd never manage the one-layer thing, but I really did mean to try and emulate the white space.  Ah well! - in the end I just had to fill it up a bit, and add a bit more stencilling!  And I wasn't brave enough to stamp the sentiment directly onto the card, so used a piece of scrap card and stuck it over the extra dots.  And added a few shiny little gems.

I did manage the  diagonal, stencilled inky background by masking off the rest of the card and using several shades of pink, orange and red Distress Inks.  I then added the stencilled dots in a couple of deeper shades.  The stencil is one that came in the August Craft Box
I did actually STAMP that sentiment - which is quite an achievement as stamping is not (rofl) one of my favourite things! 
My butterfly is die cut using a Spellbinders 2 layer die, I inked it with the same DIs, then edged ever so slightly with a black Sharpie pen

Anyway, following Joanne's card too closely would have been "copying", wouldn't it?  And it's all about taking inspiration and using those ideas and techniques in your own way.

I hope you like my interpretation, and that you'll visit Joanne's BLOG to see more of her clever creativity.  I also hope you'll join in and give your own creative muses , or un-sung heroes a bit of exposure, I, for one, would love to see who inspires you.

One last request - I'd love it if you'd "follow" my blog - there's a couple of ways to do it and they are in my side bar.  I'll be sure to return the favour.

Thank you all for sharing your own creativity - whenever the mojo is lacking, it's good to know that a wander around our favourite blogs and websites will soon get us feeling more creative, isn't it?