Winter Walks - or, the one that wouldn't play

Sometimes a project is doomed from the start, isn't it? When I saw that the theme at CD Sundays for this fortnight is Winter Walks, I thought I'd leave it a few days as it sounded rather Christmassy and I've rather had my fill of Christmas crafting for a few weeks (I'll be starting my 2015 cards soon though).

So at the weekend I decided it was time to set to work on it. But almost everything I could find was just TOO Christmassy. Some rather lovely decoupage on a couple of La Pashe CDs and of course lots of Joanna Sheen images. I printed out a sheet of Joanna Sheen toppers, but as occasionally happens to me with her CDs, the images came out dark, muddy and grainy. Not usable at all. I don't know whether the problem is with the image itself or the way it talks to my computer, but it only seems to happen with Joannna's CDs and then only with certain images.

I was just about to give up when I remembered the Digital Crafting Essentials CDs I got as a cover mounted gift with a magazine last Christmas or the one before. I went through all the hundreds of images on the CD and eventually  came up with a charming topper sheet from the selection provided from the Crafters Companion Winter Paintbox Poppets range. As well as a large image, there were two half-width ones, and I thought they would be perfect to use triptych-style in an opened out gatefold card.

I didn't need to print out a background paper as the colours in the images went beautifully with a sheet I had printed for a previous project, from the old, old CD Filigree Fusion from Artylicious (I don't think it's available any more).

So I created my gatefold card and went to arrange my images on it - only to find the main image was too tall and the smaller ones too wide to fit on my card!

Right, plan B - a horizontal card with just the main image on the left and a ribbon-and-ricrac trim down the right. I matted the backing paper onto silver mirri, stuck down the trim and adhered the whole lot to the card. Then went to add the topper - TOO TALL! Goodness knows why I hadn't realised that it would be, after it had been too tall for my gatefold card!

With the adhesive already drying, I had to act fast, so I turned the base card to portrait orientation and attached the topper, which of course means that the ribbon and ricrac are almost completely hidden.  The greeting and flower, which were going to have been on the border running down the right of the card, are now at the bottom of the image. And, mostly to remind myself that the ribbon is actually there, I fished out the last tiny scrap of it from the bin and knotted it to add to the top of the card.

So here you are - the card that didn't want to be made! I don't think I've ever encountered so many obstacles to the completion of a single, not terribly ambitious, card!