A Lovely Sketch for SUO Challenges

Mornin' y'all!  Man, Ryan was in a MOOD this morning but he's off at school now and hopefully he'll be happier when I pick him up.  Daphne and I are enjoying the quiet...or we would be, if the wind wasn't kicking up so much.  I'm going to have hair styled by tornado when we go out for our walk in a bit.

Anyway, today is the day for the first SUO Challenge of the year!

We're starting off with a sketch:

Okay, I had to think long and hard about this sketch, but I ended up with two cards:

I made the darker card on the left first, and then I wanted to play around with the colors a bit so I made the lighter card on the right.  Okay I had a piece of that beautiful DSP I used in the background that was big enough for a second card front and I just had to, isn't that pattern gorgeous?  Here's a closer look at the dark card:

Instead of cutting smaller pieces for the elements behind the circle, I cut a striped pattern the "wrong" way (usually I like to cut where the stripes go the long way of the piece of paper if that makes sense) so it kind of gives the feel of those breaks in the pattern but it's still one piece.  Except one of those strips is two pieces because I am a thrifty soul and I knew the join would be hidden by the circle so I could use up a smaller scrap.

Here's the lighter version:

I had cut the white "lovely" for the first card and didn't use it, so I figured I would work it in here.  I remembered there are stripes in the color family DSP packs so I got some Summer Splash stripes from that, and then used the Summer Splash splatty pattern for the circle since I knew the Secret Sea ink would show up well on it.  So which one do you like better, the darker version or the lighter one?  Either way I love that floral DSP : )

We hope you'll play along with us at upload your card at the SUO Challenges blog.  Don't forget to use only Stampin' Up! products and most important, have fun!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Sweet Blooms
Ink:  Secret Sea
Paper:  Garden Green, Cloud Cover, Secret Sea, Petunia Pop, Basic White, Flowers in Bloom DSP, Summer Splash DSP
Accessories:  Sweet Blooms dies, In Color Flat Pearls