Look at These Crazy Cute Owls on Clean and Simple Cards

Sometimes making a clean and simple handmade card is more challenging than a busy layered one. I LOVE the look of clean and simple, but sometimes I get lost along the way and the card gets busier and busier. (Tell me it happens to you too, please!) Today's cards stuck to clean and simple but still have LOTS of personality and color, and include the cutest owl stamps! Let's take a look!

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The trademark of a clean and simple card is often a nice big WHITE background. Empty space gives our eyes a chance to rest as they're admiring art. Too much going on causes our eyes and brain to move on, but a nice white space encourages us to LOOK - whether its a card, a painting, a landscape, photograph - anything. Adding a colored card base sets off the white nicely on this card and it gave me a base color to start with. Here's how to make this card:

• Scribble stripes of color across the top center of a white cardstock panel. I used Jane Davenport Colorsticks, but pastels, Gelatos or heck, even some crayons would work beautifully. The Colorsticks are a bit water soluble, so after I colored, I brushed a little water over the top just to lightly blend them.
• Stamp owl and heart onto white cardstock and fussy cut. 
• Stamp the branch right onto the white panel, (overlapping a bit of the colored stripes if you'd like. You'll see on the top card I overlapped, and the bottom one I lowered it a bit. Whatever works!)
• Adhere owl and heart onto card. (The little line below the heart is part of the same stamp, so before adhering the fussy cut heart, i stamped it directly onto the cardstock and glued the heart on top so I wouldn't lose that little line.)
• To finish off this simple card, stamp a sentiment, splatter some Silk or watercolor splashes and add a few enamel dots.

I purposely kept this card flat and ready for mailing, but you could certainly adhere your owl with foam tape for some added dimension if you prefer.

Below is the same card but using a completely different color palette. I love them both! These owls are really fun to color in but I enjoyed a challenge of making a card that didn't require coloring. 

Today's blog post is part of Old Is New day on the Impression Obsession blog. It's the day where the IO designers pull out some of our older and well-loved stamps and get inky! This idea would be easy to try with many different stamp sets, so I hope you'll take this idea and make it your own with your products and creativity!

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Be sure to visit the IO blog for a list of designers participating today! 

And HEY - don't be a stranger, because beginning on the 15th we'll be celebrating the brand new Fall/Winter Release from Impression Obsession with a three day blog hop, giveaways, and LOTS of brand new inspiration! See you then! xoxo

Supplies on Today's Cards:

Who Love You clear stamp set