Taking the Challenge!

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Reported by Amy Westerman

Boy, the fabric challenge Sarah and Julie gave us was truly a challenge for me! I’m strictly a paper and ribbon kind of gal, so using fabric in some way on my cards was going to be a push, to say the least!

In the “olden days”, I loved to sew curtains for my house. But clothes, never! To be honest, I had a hard time understanding pattern directions, so eventually, sewing went by the wayside. Luckily, I had purchased some really fun tie-dyed fabric about a year ago, so I set about figuring out how I might use it in my card making. The fabric was luscious shades of bright orange and pink. I wanted to make this as simple as possible, so I just cut a piece of the fabric nearly as big as the card front, and treated it simply as I did designer paper. The fabric became my first layer on the card. This is what I eventually ended up with. A vibrant card inspired by the luscious colors in the fabric! I was surprised….this was a fairly easy thing to do!


The second project I did with the same luscious orange and pink fabric. It is my book on Color. Or more importantly, it’s a book that will highlight the role color plays in my life. I want the book to eventually be filled with the papers, flowers, ribbons and fabrics that inspire me every single day, in every single thing I do. Seeing as I’m such a designer paper freak, this book will be filled in no time! On the cover, I laid out papers that I love in a quilt like fashion. The cover was made over a year ago! I must have been thinking “fabric” even back then! I haven’t worked on the book since I did the cover, so I thought this fabric challenge would be the perfect time to start working on it again.


Here’s the completed page I made using the orange and pink fabric. I included a photo of me as a young girl on the page, because I was inspired by these two colors all the way back then. In fact, my bedroom was decorated in these very same colors! I actually weaved two different fabrics together to make the fabric the base of the page. Then I used my Cuttlebug to cut out the letters that spell out “Color Inspires Me”. The center of the flower is chipboard covered in some new Basic Grey paper. The leaves of the flower are cardstock punched out with my new tiny scallop punch.


It’s amazing how easily fabric was incorporated into my work. I loved it and will definitely use it on my cards again!