I love doing the Creative Belli blog challenges. This challenge was to use wood on your card. My wheels started turning as to what I could do with wood when toothpicks came to mind. I thought of branches, flower stems, and all the usual ways to use them. But I wanted something different. That is when I thought of using the toothpicks for Chinese writing. I pulled out my retired Kanji set and looked at the symbols in the set. I decided to use the Harmony sentiment.
I began by using my Basic Black pad to dye the toothpicks. I pushed them down in the pad on all 4 sides (I used wax paper to protect my fingers). Once I had 3 of them dyed, I set them aside to dry and began putting my card together. I used the sketch from the Sketch Saturday blog. With an oriental theme, I chose to use red, black, and gold as my color scheme.
I stamped the bamboo leaves from Embrace Life in Garden Green. The image panel was a little harsh looking to me so I sponged on some Mellow Moss ink. I cut my layers and used my gold painting pen to add gold to the edges. I then stacked my layers and decided to use the words from the Harmony stamp to make my sentiment strip. I wanted it to be a little more noticeable so I used my Basic Black marker and a ruler to color the edges of the strip. I got some free ribbon in an order I placed and knew it would be perfect for the card.
Once the card was put together, I had to switch the placement of the symbol to the right as I didn't have room on the left. I started cutting the toothpicks up using the stamp as a guide as to what the symbol should look like. Once the card was finished I thought I had been pretty creative and felt the final creation was interesting.