Inspiration can show up at any time – on a walk in a park, talking with a friend, searching for ideas online. Sometimes we act on ideas from the inspiration immediately. Other times the ideas get set aside for one reason or another.

When I was coming up with an idea for a Mother’s Day card a few weeks ago, I remembered an inspiration challenge I had seen on SplitCoastStampers.com and the design idea I had for it. I went to look up the challenge and found it had been posted 9 years ago.

This idea had been rolling around in my head for 9 years and I hadn’t acted on it yet!

I felt like such a slacker.

Then I remembered the saying of “better late than never” and decided to get over it and move forward with finally using the design.

The inspiration challenge image was one of the simple line drawings from Pablo Picasso. He is one of my favorite artists and I love these drawings. I immediately thought of the Heartfelt Thanks set by Stampin’ Up! because it had the line art of a flower. I wanted to use the line stamp in black ink with the partner stamp of the whole flower in clear heat embossed powder over it. But I never thought of a layout I liked for it, never found the time to sit and play with it, excuses, excuses, excuses.

Then a few weeks ago, I was back on SplitCoastStampers.com and saw a card posted by Penny627 that she made for a Try a New Technique challenge. I really liked the layout and it felt perfect for the line art idea.

For a Mother’s Day card, going with black didn’t seem right. So I went with pinks and loved how it turned out. The steps for making the card are below.

One lesson learned with this card is to never discount ideas that have been rolling around in my head for years. Just use those ideas when the time is right.

I also learned that I want to be better with not hesitating to act on inspiration. Who knows how many ideas used to be rattling around in my brain that were pushed out to make room for things like the quadratic formula or the millions of passwords we need to know these days.

Do you have ideas that you have set aside until the “right” time? Or do you act on inspiration when it strikes?

Making the card:

In making this card, I used stamps from the Heartfelt Thanks set by Stampin’ Up! The paper used was Whisper White, Melon Mambo, and Pretty in Pink (yes, the Psychedelic Furs song kept running through my head the whole time I was working on these cards :)). The inks used were Melon Mambo and VersaMark.

1. Cut the paper for the main part of the card and the 2 layers for the front.
2. Stamp the line art image with Melon Mambo on the white panel. Let this sit for a few hours to make sure it is completely dry. Otherwise it will could bleed a bit on the next step.
3. Stamp the partner stamp in VersaMark over the line art.
4. Cover with Crystal Clear embossing powder and use a heat gun to emboss it.
5. Attach the Whisper White layer to the Melon Mambo layer.
6. Punch 3 tiny holes in the layers and place 3 Pretty in Pink brads in them.
7. Use Stampin’ Dimensionals to attach the layers to the Pretty in Pink card. (The Dimensionals are why the layers appear to be off in the photo because of the angle it was taken to show off the embossing.)