Lovely As A Tree

Although I immediately fell in love with this stamp set, I didn't buy it right away.  It was released nearly 5 years ago but I didn't buy it until about  6 months ago.  There are so many great things you can do with the images in this set.  The card I'm posting today is relatively simple and didn't take long to make.  Actually, I made the first card several months ago and when I needed a thank you card this morning I picked it out of my stash and popped a thank you sentiment on it.  Then I started thinking . .  .

I really like this card, do I want to give it away?  Well, it always bugged me that there was that spot in the middle where I didn't get it stamped right.  I can send it.  It was for a man so he's not likely to notice anyway, right?  I just had to make another one (without the defect) before giving the card up!  I also hadn't inked the card before I put it together and I wanted to make that change too.  It didn't take me long to recreate it. 

I hadn't used the Bat Punch in quite a while, did you already guess that I used it for the top border?  I cut a strip of Whisper White cardstock 1 3/4" wide and Inserted it into the Bat Punch as far as it would go.  I lined up the tip of the wing with the last punch and punched again on each side of the first punch.  Kind of cloud-like, right?

First I used the scallop Circle punch to create a cloud-like background on the Bashful Blue cardstock.  Just use a sponge dauber to add a little ink around a third of the punch.  I used Bashful Blue ink but you can experiment with different colors or even a Versamark pad.  I didn't want there to be too much contrast so I wanted to use the same color.

I stamped the stamp with 6 bare trees onto the Bashful Blue background as well as a strip of Certainly Celery, you don't need the whole image on the green, just the trunks and ground.  I cut along the ground line and matched it up to the tree trunks on the blue piece.  On my second card I added a bit of ribbon too.  So, what do you think, is the second card better than the original card?