It is Sunday, so that means there is a new challenge up at Cupcake Inspirations.  This week we are hosting a theme challenge that is asking for…Something Sweet Inside.  Now, what does that mean…is it a girl filled with sugar and spice?  Does it mean a card filled with candy inside a bag?  Or does it mean a simple looking card with something sweet literally inside the card?

I went with this last thought but decided to make a window for the viewing of all that sweetness.

This week we are sponsored by the online store, The Greeting Farm.  This week they are generously offering a $20 gift certificate to one random participant.

Now, I really struggled with this design, especially since this is rather out of my normal comfort zone.  I have some acetate sheets in my house, but I so rarely use it.  I just have not been able to mange the art of shaker cards.  I love them, don’t get me wrong…I’m just make ugly ones.  I knew there was no way I was going to make a shaker card for this challenge.  Instead what I wanted to do was make a card that would have a window to what was inside.

So I pulled out card stock for a card and a bit of pink card stock and ran them through my big shot lined up with a Spellbinders shape die so that the windows would match.  I trimmed the edges of the pink card stock so that it would measure only about four inches.

I then knew I had to spruce up the pink card stock so the card wouldn’t be boring, so I pulled out a Donna Downey stencil and some worn lipstick Distress Ink and blended it through.  Then I blended the edges with the same color and adhered the card stock and the acetate down to the card frame.

Pulling out some watercolor paper and a stamp pack from Echo park, I stamped out a bunch of candy with some antique linen Distress Ink.  I pulled out my Gansai Tambi water colors and started coloring in all the different images, almost completely erasing the stamping ink.  I stamped out a sentiment on both the inside and outside with a bit of black Archival Ink.

This isn’t my favorite card design, manly because there is very little coloring, and lets be honest, I am at my best when I get to color, color and color.  However, I love how the watercolored images turned out and I like that I move from my comfort zone.

Go take a peak at the others Sweetie designers.  Their designs are amazing this week.  They really came up with a wide range of interpretations of ‘sweet inside’.