Go for Gold - Win over $200 in MFT Products!

I made this card as a "just for fun" sample for the current MFT Guest Designer Contest going on right NOW, right HERE.  One lucky winner will be chosen and announced on July 3rd and will win over $200 of MFT products.  Want Christmas in July?  Come play along!  We'd love to have tons of entries!  The best part?  It's a SKETCH!  Easy peasy!  :)  Check out all the details HERE.
Before I get into the detail about my card, I need to share some info about a rare SALE on MFT products!  The sale ends TODAY at the end of the day (EST), so you have about 8 hours to shop and save 20% on ALL products in the MFT Boutique.  CLICK HERE to shop and save 20%!
I inked up a stamp set I hadn't used yet, Go for Gold, for my card using the Guest Designer Contest Sketch.  Sometimes stamping is like rainbows and ponies... and sometimes stamping is like... a nightmare.  This card would fall under the nightmare category.  Picture heavy sighs, paper flying across the room, and growling.  I fought the card, and I won... but I came out heavily scarred.  LOL  
I started with the cute Go for Gold à la modes stamp set and colored her with a combination of Copic markers and Prismacolor pencils on WHITE paper (mistake #1).  When I was done, the white was way too bright for the patterned paper (which I had my heart set on using), so I ended up having to sponge the entire layer with Tea Dye Distress Ink so it blended better than the patterned paper.  Carefully... so as not to ruin the completely colored and paper-pieced image.  That was fun.  Not.  

Let me not even get into how many times I tried to color the flame in a super cool blue to red/orange fashion.  You can see I ended up paper-piecing it.  Under that is HIDEOUSNESS.  Trust me.  Then I wrestled with the fishtail flag and what to stamp on it.  I tried about 5 different things before I was happy.  

Of course I wanted to add a banner and chose Banner Day and By the Letters to create one.  I just could not place them in a spot that worked.  The image I chose was too tall, but I had already colored it, and subsequently inked the heck out of it, so I was not walking away.  My solution?  Make the card bigger... 6 X 6 to be exact.  Then I had to stitch another layer, cut a HUGE card base, and finally I had room to stretch out the banner like I wanted to.  

After that, I was spent.  No more embellishments, no more stitching, just NO MORE.  LOL  It is what it is.  And it is HUGE.  LOL


I wish you more success than I had in my stamp room today with the sketch.  I'll give you a hint: choose your main image very carefully.  I do not recommend Go for Gold for this one.  LOL  


I hope you find time sometime in the next couple weeks to play along.  The prize is TOTALLY worth it!  Again, you can read all the details HERE.

Here are the dies I used on my card today:

See you soon!