Before and After

A couple posts back I showed you a card that went through two revisions. Well, that seems to be what's going on for me a lot lately. Sometimes things go easy-breezy and the process just flows, the cards come out beautiful without thinking about it and other times it doesn't come easily, in fact, it's like pulling teeth. I have three cards that I made over the weekend and uploaded to my Splitcoast gallery. They were all made for the 100 MFT Sketches challenge. I might not have even bothered to put them on the blog but I thought that you might like to see that you aren't the only one who has to struggle. As I was writing them up I decided that I wasn't happy with any of them. I guess the point of this is to say that the card is never really finished until you put it in the mail or hand it to your friend. If you aren't satisfied with it put it aside for awhile and go back to it with a clear head and see what happens. When I got home from work I pulled the cards out and did just that. I thought that this card didn't have any jazz. I liked the paper choices and the stamping but it just didn't have anything that made it pop. In fact that's how I felt about all three cards. I liked them all but they needed something to make them pop. For this card all I did was add four little light blue Crystal Stickers Pearls. For me this little addition made a big difference. Sombetimes it just takes a little tweak. The papers for this card are from the Crate Paper "Prudence" collection. The stamps are from the MFT "Hot Stuff" set. The border punch is EK Success "Moroccan Lace". For the coffee beans nestibilities were used to cut it and the mat out.
The next card is for the If the Shoe Fits challenge to use lime green, white, black and white polka dots. That's a fun color combination. It was fun to make the card and I did like it. The green gives it a very cheerful feeling, I need to remember this next time I'm trying to come up with a get well card. I used another MFT sketch for the layout and between the layout and the colors I thought the card looked pretty good in its before state. But again, for me it needed something to make it pop. It already had a couple hot fix crystals on the sentiment area so I didn't want to put pearls or any more crystals on it. It was the stamped area that needed a little something more and as it turns out it was pretty easy to fix. I got out my stickles and as my buddy Eileen would tell me, everything looks better with stickles. I think she's right, definitely this card looks better with them. I covered the icing on the cake, the candle flames and the polka dots on the dress. It made a big difference to me.
For this card the paper is from the Making Memories "Black and White" pack. The candles were made with the EK Success "Candles" border punch. Copics were used to color in the stamped image. Nestibilities were used to punch out the circles.
I have one more card with a before and after story but it's very late and I'm too tired to post it now so tomorrow I'll have another before and after to share with you. If you enjoyed reading this come back to see the last one.
If you have time leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Were the cards fine the way they were? Do you like them better now?