Make it Monday: Decreasing Aperatures

I really liked Jenn Ellefson's technique in this week's Make It Monday challenge - Decreasing Aperatures, which is basically a fancy way to say "cut windows from bigger to smaller"! :) I got a chance to play around today and I really love the result. Here is my card:

OK, here are the layers. In the orange patterned paper (from Echo Park) I cut the Mat Stack 4 shape. I cut the pinked-edge Limitless Layers die from Orange Zest and adhered that to Hawaiian Shores cardstock, on which I had stamped the Mat Stack 4 striped image in Versamark. Then I cut the 1.75" circle through both layers. That whole panel is then popped up on the card base. Now, on the base, I adhered an orange zest "frame" (I cut the inside with a square nestie so just the border would show), and I also adhered a small square of the polka-dot Echo Park paper. Then I carefully cut the Love Lives Here house shape from the card base.

Take a look at the inside of the card - I die cut the house again on white and stamped the images on it. Then I adhered it through the card front to be perfectly aligned, and stamped the little heart in the opening - one last aperature! Added the grass and the inside sentiment for a nice little greeting.

Now, if I may, I want to take a minute to mention the front sentiment, because I'm so darn proud of it! LOL!

I knew I wanted something along the lines of "congratulations on your new home" but I don't have that in any of my sentiments. However, one of my favorite sets - Signature Greetings - has a "Congrats on your new little bundle". I stared at it for a second and realized that it wouldn't be hard to selectively ink , which I did by putting scotch tape over the "little bundle" part of the stamp to ink it, then pulling it off before I stamped. For the word "home", I liked the font in Love Lives Here's "my home is wherever you are", and it had the cute little coordinating heart, but it also had that dashed line very close to the text. I decided that rather than trying to mask off the line, I would just incorporate it into the sentiment. I think it grounds the other text nicely!

The three gems at the bottom are from Creative Charms, and I colored them with a Copic marker to match the Hawaiian Shores cardstock.

I'm not sure where this one is going, but I really like how it turned out! thanks for a fun technique, Jenn! I already have another couple of ideas brewing for later this week! :)

And as always, thanks for looking!