Clean and Simple - Who, ME??

Well hello and good morning!

If you read yesterday's post, you know I was going to plant pansies yesterday, which I did; however, I did not get the job finished.  I started later than I should have, I kept getting interrupted, the island bed needed to be pruned and weeded before I could plant, and why in the world is it harder on me to plant a zillion annuals than it is to prune multiple shrubs?  HARD pruning, at that.  Oh my aching....everything.  But I will finish tomorrow and feel good that the "winter color" is all in place before the cold snap arrives on Monday.

Today's card is a personal challenge of sorts.  It meets a few other challenges as well (linked below), but I made it mainly to prove that I could.  CAS, that is.  Clean and Simple.  Un-embellished (or almost).  Lots of white space.  If you go back through my posts, the common denominator of nearly all of them is that I like to embellish my cards.  A lot.  I like layers, and patterns and textures, and most of all, BLING.  I LOVE anything reflective, be it rhinestones, glitter, metallics, you name it, I like it if it shines.  And that is why the clean and simple look escapes me.  But since I was challenged (and I do love a challenge), CAS is the direction I took today.

Yes, I embossed that enormous expanse of "white" space.  I mean, come on, let's not get crazy here.  I can't have all that space with nothing on it, I just can't.  So I dry embossed the Lucky Limeade layer with a Cuttlebug ef (I don't know the name of it) and popped it up on dimensionals.  On top of that I placed a strip of Night of Navy die cut with the Dienamics Jumbo Ric Rac die.

For the flower I used Dienamics Prima Donna Petals and Whisper White and yellow from my stash, only one layer of each.  I curled the petals a bit before adhering them, then cut a couple of leaves in some green, also from my stash.  I put a tiny dewdrop in the center, and that is it for the bling.  I don't think dewdrops qualify as bling, so this might be my first card ever to not get at least SOME sort of bling on it.  Heavens.

The sentiment from SU Teeny Tiny Wishes is stamped in Tuxedo Black and punched out using the SU Word Window punch.  No double layers, just the one piece.  Can this be happening?

And that, dear friends, is my card.  Now don't be thinking this is going to start a trend, it isn't.  But it's kind of nice to know I can pull off a CAS card when I need to.  And it wasn't even that scary, though I did fortify myself with a handful of M&Ms. For medicinal purposes, of course.

Thanks for joining me, and have a lovely day.  I'm heading back out to fight the good pansy fight and finish things up so that I can come in and make a glitterlicious card afterwards.

Happy crafting!

Challenges entered:

Anything Goes Challenge #79 - Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Thinking of You/Sympathy
Color Throwdown #217 - Black, White, Lime, Navy
Speedy Fox and Friends Challenge #132 - Use Ric Rac 
FOSTV#45 - Anything Goes