Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Monochrome

Hi Everyone! I hope you've been joining us on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog. If you haven't, check out the blog for this week's challenge theme which is, "Monochrome".  There's so much inspiration! Don't forget to check out the amazing and wonderfully talented artist, Karen Hayselden. She's been an inspiration to all of us this month as our guest designer.

I chose different hues of brown for my project. I have to admit it was a little difficult not to add another color to the palette and I did sneak in a little, teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy, bit of pink. I kept telling myself this was okay because some shades of brown have a pink hue to them, right? Anyway, here's my piece called, "Couture".

I cut the dress form from the Tim Holtz Sewing Room Bigz Die out of one of the sheets of cardstock from Prima's Tales of You and Me Collection.

I wanted my dress form to have a skirt so I hand cut a skirt form from the same Prima card stock collection and sprayed it liberally with water on both sides. This allowed the paper to break down so I could form a skirt.

Very carefully I manipulate the paper and fold it in a fan shape making sure each fold of the skirt is even.

When the skirt is completely dry, I place it over the dress form to see how it fits. You can see the dress form is a bit wider than my skirt.

Instead of making the skirt over again, I trim the dress form down on the sides. This will not show on the final project so it's an easy fix.

To add a little bling to the skirt, I took some sheer ribbon that had shiny thread on both the top and bottom. I folded the ribbon so the bottom thread would lay just below the top thread and sewed that down with my sewing machine. This would be the sash for my dress.

I placed the ribbon just above the skirt on the dress form. The sewing thread shows at this point but it will be covered up with another ribbon element later.

I wanted to give my dress a little touch of whimsy so I cut a butterfly from the Tim Holtz Detailed Butterfly Die. Here is where the little, teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy, bit of pink came in. I edged the butterfly wings with Spun Sugar Distress Ink using a mini blending tool.

I then edged the wings with Ground Espresso Distress Ink to tone down the pink color.

I cut the butterfly in half with my Tim Holtz Scissors so I could place each wing behind the dress form.

I begin creating my background and cut a frame from Spellbinders Timeless Rectangle Die out of a piece of Simon Says Stamp Dark Chocolate card stock. I then cut out the center of the rectangle with another rectangular die. You can use any rectangle die you have one hand, I used the 2-3/4" x 4" inch pierced rectangle die by My Favorite Things.

I adhered the frame to the center of a 5x7 piece of card stock from Prima's Tales of You and Me Collection and distressed the edges using Prima's Distressing Tool.

I then adhered that to a 6x8 piece of Simon Says Stamp Dark Chocolate card stock and distressed the edges.

I cut my dress form pedestal off to lengthen the form. When I adhered the skirt to the dress form it was crooked, so this fixed that problem as well. I cut out a left and right fanciful flourish from a Cheery Lynn die. You can use Spellbinder's Foliage Flourish for the same look.

I glued all my elements down, added a brown ribbon to the dress and a few paper roses and called this project done!

I hope you enjoyed seeing how I created my "Couture" panel and that you join us this week in all the fun. Add your project to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog and you could win a $50 gift voucher to their amazing store. I can't wait to see what you create!

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You can find all the following supplies I used to create this project at Simon Says Stamp:

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