When is CAS not CAS?

Well its one layer week at Less is More again, and I applaud Chrissie and Mandi for keeping us on the straight and narrow with the core rule of CAS which is as minimal as possible……and I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do….but as I often find, I went completely off track….oops.

One layer is always difficult for me as it definitely lends itself to stamping (against my blog philosophy!). The theme lent itself perfectly to a card I wanted to make featuring one of my favourite quotes, which is the best way I know of conveying hope to someone when things seem at their darkest (sadly I have cause to make another one of these cards and I make it with a sad heart, but also with much love and care).

The quote is :- Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.   - Rabindranath Tagore
For once I decided I didn't want to use white, but the only scrap that I thought suitable was a strip of A4 flecked card…didn’t want to do another A6 so I decided to off set the spine to create a dl size. I had made my mind up to have just the words on the front and perhaps a little image inside but as the inside was to be visible I thought “this kills two birds with one stone!!”…perfect?!?…

….and that’s where it went a bit wrong… I really think there is not enough “white/negative/empty” space for this to be truly CAS, plus it’s overly fussy for CAS

I made my own stencil for  the bird and used felt pen ink smudged on with my handmade daubers…as the bird appeared to be floating I “grounded” him by lightly stencilling over a torn paper edge

inside I just twisted a dauber to give a faint hint of a sun and without reinking smudged some sky with the blue dauber…..then I got carried away and distressed around the edges with a little more ink….the final nail in the coffin I think, as far as CAS is concerned.

So… not happy with the final result for the challenge I decided to use one of the other text boxes I created when I was playing with  the quote. BY the way I downloaded a fantastic free font from kevinandamanda.com called RAGE which I thought perfect for the word FAITH. I also used a dingbat font for the little scrolly details at the top (called Florals 2 from 1001 free fonts I think) .

I printed the text panel onto my normal square white card. I centralised it as it seemed a very formal arrangement.

 

This is more the sort of CAS I am comfortable with….and I sat on my hands a resisted any urges to add any embellishments ….not even one itty bitty tiny one! (although I think a tiny bow at the top would have been quite nice!!)

I was going to add a little bird inside but when I created a smaller bird stencil  it ended up looking like a miniature Tyrannosaurus Rex!!!! so I gave up!!

Now… more importantly … off to look at the lovely creations I can see at Less is more.!!